Poems from Colombia

Medellin #1

A kiss like an outpouring of tongues
Clawed at as I push away

A Dali moustache leads me home
One feather earring, and liberal

Passing lit-up garages
Empty with spilt oil

Hollow and blank, that five o’clock anthem
Beating like shallow techno

The only thing clear, or half-clear,
I could carry on…no more to ruin

Straddling daylight, moon still there
Cuddling modest clouds
Shining past its bedtime

The delicious failure of sunlit walks
In familiar territory, a playground

Greasy fingers in bed, inhaling
Automatic fan makes the heat lazy

Narrow room with no windows
Only curtains flapping like loathsome moths

 


  
Medellin #2

Swimming beans with a chorizo sausage
And too-clean rice,
A taste not your own

A clock with no hands glowing there
Church-like on Calle 9

Roaring and capitalizing,
Capsizing and the leaves all lit-up like autumn

Some world found out
By those from outside

Fresh coffee and other bottled smells

Under rough roofs and repair shops,
Stray bits of string, frayed edges,
Palm trees and a sunbathing banana

Men dressed like plastic women,
Square buttocks and waxed

Over consuming within your means
Faces that tell stories and don’t

Sanding floors and scraping paint
(Oily paint casts a stain
As the tap lets it run)

And there´s lightning like reminders

Your heart beats and your limbs numb
Alone and swollen and completely not wondering

By the Water's Edge: short story

I left the boxy flat with my family squeezed inside - my mother sweating by the window, her unshaved legs spread apart in a warrior position; my grandma sweating by the stove, dipping a finger into the bubbling soup, licking it off with a click; my brother and sister bored and hot and sweating on the sofa.
    I left, sweating myself, my thighs already wet as they rubbed against themselves under my skirt, calling back through the closed door - ‘Just going for a swim!’
     I walked down the steps that echoed and smelt like every other hallway in this place - a mixture of cigarettes and stock-cubes. I carried a plastic bag that cut into my hand, weighed down with a towel, picnic supplies, and a book I hadn’t started yet. It was too hot to eat or read but I needed the pretense of having something to do.
    Outside, the air was heavy, basting me with greasy heat. Moving was hard and slow. I waited by the road while a tractor passed. It wheezed like an old pair of lungs. The farmer waved and beeped his horn.
    Remembering the way to the riverbank, I crossed to the dirt-track lined with unfinished houses on either side. Some were crumbling, clearly destroyed, others were half-built and caged by scaffolding. The grass was dead and yellow, the mud grey and dry. On my right was Mira’s house. She was a friend of my grandma’s who we’d visited the previous day. I passed the shady patch of garden where we had sat eating watermelon.
    Kids played in the field ahead, kicking balls through rusty white goalposts stuck in at jaunty angles. Kids half-naked, skinny and brown and bare-footed. They ran and screamed at each other. I felt embarrassed, like they were looking at me knowing I didn’t belong, thinking who...?
   

    I walked to the quiet patch by the river, away from the wooden docks where the dogs played and left their shit to slip on. Through the gaps in the trees I could see the broad stretch of water glinting playfully.
    Cornfields spread out to my left, so tall I felt protected. Grassy mounds and weeping trees surrounded the riverbank, making it soft and swamp-like. But there was noise, hot noise, bugs and echoes of the children screaming. I lay on my towel feeling self-conscious even with no one around. I straightened it out, moved it so it was level on the ground and wondered which way I should put my head. The towel was starchy and coarse on my back. I stripped down to my bikini and sat bent over, kneading the folds of my stomach. I lay down instead, preferring it flat.
    An image came to me - of my grandma reading her gossip magazines by the electric fan. It made me wish I had kissed her goodbye.
    I lay with my hands above my head and gave my body a stretch right down to the toes and I felt it in me, some fleshy heat that travelled up and along me, collected where the sweat was spreading between my thighs. With my eyes closed I felt drowsy, drugged. It was only half pleasant.
    The earth beneath my head thudded. I tensed but didn’t open my eyes. The thudding stopped and I felt the sunlight blocked out from beneath my eyelids.

    ‘Cao.’

    It was a voice that resounded, stayed static in the air.
    I started, sat up, twisted around awkwardly. It was Atso, Mira’s son. I’d only met him in passing, dressed in his light-blue uniform buttoned all the way to the top. Tight trousers. He had smiled down at me, my head only reaching the badge on his chest.
    Now he was standing there, towering over me even more. He wore swimming trunks, white and worn. He had foam slippers on his feet. One of them was almost touching my hand, which was spread out to support my weight.
   
    ‘Cao’, I answered back, the only word I could pronounce with confidence.

    He crouched down, a violent and sudden action, changing his whole stature. His elbows leant on knees that jutted out towards me. It was an open gesture. He squinted through the sun and smiled wide. There were small gaps between his teeth.

    ‘Is hot.’ The words shivered and wafted into the heat.

    ‘Yeah.’

    He came to sit beside me, I moved over on my towel. I was glad that I looked red from the heat. I hugged my knees as close as I could. His shoulder brushed mine so lightly that a current ran up my skin. He opened his mouth - closed it again - furrowed his eyebrows.
    ‘Uhh...you swim?’

    I unclasped my knees.

    ‘Yeah.’

    ‘Aide.’

    He stood up, his knee next to my head now, hairs like brambles.
    I waited until he had walked right down to the riverbank. I was suspended for a moment - I wondered if it was a joke, if he really wanted me here. He hadn’t brought a towel. I watched as he kicked off his slippers and without a backwards glance jumped into the water. He howled like a wolf. The sound shocked me out of my stupor in time to see his face rising out and sparkling. I smiled.

    ‘Aide!’ he called again.

    I snapped the fabric of my bikini bottoms, pulling them to cover my buttocks. The earth under my feet was smooth and compact. I didn’t jump. I stepped in slowly, my blood fizzing with the cold. He laughed when I threw myself under and resurfaced with a scream.
   
   
    The river looked like a lake - so wide and still. The water was cloudy and filtered green from the bordering trees. I could feel the promise of river weeds tickling my toes as I kicked lazily to keep afloat. Atso did flips underwater. I swam breaststroke, wondering if I looked elegant or just shy.
    There was a moment when I turned around and he was gone. I looked in all directions. Then I felt a tug on my ankle. Something was pulling me under. I struggled to get away - splashed and breathed in gulps of water. Then he emerged beside me, hair dripping, an intent smile coursing over his face. I splashed him.

    ‘Nemoj! Don’t do that!’ I said, laughing.

We swam for hours until the water felt lukewarm and natural, like air around our bodies. The river had soaked off a layer of skin. I felt opened up and stretched out.
    We spoke through laughter and exclamations of ‘ahhh...’ The sky was pink and alive - a final burst of colour before nightfall. I followed Atso as he swam to the shore, watched his shoulder blades beat like wings.
    It was strange when we stood on dry land. Everything was heavier and more real. I handed him my towel and pretended to search through my bag. I couldn’t look at him as he rubbed his hair dry. The way he bent down reminded me of grazing bulls.
    We walked in twilight, his slippers slapping his feet, a rhythm conducting the near silence.

    Then he asked, ‘How many years you have?’

    I hesitated. Two slaps of the slippers.

    ‘Fourteen’ I replied, immediately wishing I’d added on three years instead of one.

    He turned to me, his eyes white, ‘Strasno!’ Then he laughed low and long and said something I didn’t understand.



The dirt-track was lit up by kitchen lights, cosy and orange. There were still people outside in their gardens, stoking mini bonfires and roasting corn, an old man loading firewood into the back of his truck.

    ‘Jesi li gladno? Eat?’ Atso asked, stopping outside the bare-brick walls of his mother’s house. Half his face was in shadow, making his long nose stick out and his features look moulded like clay.

    I nodded, feeling my skin prickle. I followed him inside where Mira was at the sink, her body bulky, the same formidable stance as my grandma. Her face lit up when she saw us. She came to me and kissed my cheeks, said my name in a throaty voice. She spoke no English but I laughed along regardless.
    When we were here the day before she had sneaked glasses of rakija to my little brother until we realised, as he rushed around, crashing his head on the sofa, that he was drunk.
    I sat down at the table covered in a plastic sheet, decorated with gingham and cartoon woodland animals. The news was on the TV. I could make out a shot of some smoke-filled city, before it switched to a turbofolk concert. Trashy ballads filled the room. Mira poured me a glass of strawberry juice, thick and pulpy, ice-cold from the fridge. Atso lay down a plate piled high with ready-made pancakes and next to it, a tub of chocolate spread so big it could have held paint. Still topless, he sat down beside me, stray pearls of river water dripping down his temples. We ate in silence while Mira fussed around us. The pancakes were damp with butter. I could feel the wet bikini soak my clothes.
    Atso motioned me to eat more - I refused. He laughed and said something about ‘little’ and ‘English’. Mira laughed back and placed a parched hand on my shoulder.
   
    It was nearly eight. I wondered if my brother and sister were in bed. If my mother was also looking at the clock. I discarded the thought when Atso invited me upstairs, leading me along an olive-green carpet. First he showed me his brother’s bedroom. It was bare apart from a mattress on the floor. He tried to explain where he’d gone. The walls were painted a bright, sickly blue, covered with graffiti letters in shades of silver and gold. Some words I recognised, ‘Gangsta’, ‘Get Money Fuck Bitchez’, dollar signs everywhere. There was a sort of pride in the way Atso showed me the walls.
    His room was next door. It was white and just as bare. His bed had a frame at least. My mother had told me he was training to be a policeman. A red leather punch-bag hung in the corner, swaying from the slam of the door.
    He pulled on a t-shirt. It was plain, grey-blue, too big even for him. He sat on a plastic chair while I leant on the wall, my legs rigid and straight on top of the duvet. The laptop made a welcoming ping as he turned it on.

    ‘You watch video?’

    ‘Da.’

    He clicked on a folder and scrolled down, muttering under his breath. He showed me videos, some I’d seen before, of kids falling off skateboards, football tackles gone wrong, singers tripping onstage. He made me jump with his laughter; it burst out of him like claps of thunder.
    Then he showed me something else.
    It was a man sitting at a table, filmed like a police tape, grainy and official. The man was crying, pleading. I didn’t recognise the language. There was another, deeper voice coming from behind the camera. The man’s eyes were dark and laced with desperation. Saliva trickled down the corners of his mouth.
    Then - a gunshot.
   
    The man’s head crashed and spluttered, a mess of red on the wall behind. It all happened in an instant. Then the video ended.
    Atso was laughing. A jolt ran through me. I tried to look relaxed and push out a giggle but I felt sick with adrenalin, the pancakes dancing in my stomach. I worried that he could hear my pulse - so loud, it was as if the blood wanted to escape my body.
    He sighed; exhausted, amused.

    ‘Eis Ventoora? Jim Cerry?’

    I nodded. My hands held each other still.
    He played the film and turned off the light. For the next hour and a half I felt his body next to mine like a radiator turned up too high.

I knew my mother would be worried by the time he walked me home. We were surrounded by the creaks of crickets and the warm residue of the day. All the houses were dark by now, drenched in blue ink. I wrapped my arms around myself, the jumper he’d leant me scratchy, almost reaching my knees. We walked slowly. Atso dragged his feet, kicking the dust and stones. He kept his eyes forward like they were stuck.
    I thought I could see my grandma’s balcony on the far side of the road. White sheets hung high on the washing line. I heard a window close and the distant sound of a dog’s bark.

    ‘You cold?’ he asked, as I shivered.
   

First Impressions: snapshots of life

In the square

A red-head walks to the cafe. She wears black-and-white trousers and a fitted jacket. Her shoes sound out from the stone floor, each step like a wave telling people she’s there.
    She sits under the canopy. Empty tables surround her and she looks down at her hands, fiddles with her phone.
      Staring at the cream stone statue in the square she wills herself to get lost in the history of such a thing. She wants to go exploring, seep into the outside world. But she flitters inside as if her heart’s beating wings as she imagines Julia arriving, her soft voice vibrating in her ear, kissing her three times and saying sorry for being late. She imagines what Julia will talk about - Harry most likely, and what he’s neglected this time - and wonders how she might respond. She can see Julia’s long, brown fingers tapping her cigarette over the ashtray.
    Checking her phone, she is met with a blank screen. She bites the nail of her middle finger too hard and it hangs, half torn, exposing a fleshy part of her.


                                                                                   *


Number 44 is a green-tiled building on the far side of the square. It looks like it was built in China, shipped over in parts, then reassembled. Its roof is thin and covered in yellow moss, with a narrow wooden door reaching all the way to the top.
    A family lived here once who came from a country no one had heard of. They spoke to no one, but kept the front door open all day so that if you passed, you could hear music coming from inside. The music was quick and spindly like a spider spinning its web, with lots of strings and jumps in melody. The youngest boys would poke their heads out and follow your steps with watery dark eyes. If the day was light and you felt it in you, you could go up to them and give them a sweet. Often you would miss your chance, as a hand would come and grab their necks, pulling them back into the dim-lit room.
    It wasn’t until the music stopped that anyone noticed they had left.


                                                                                   *


Brie - if that’s her real name - leans her elbows on the table. The mint-green of her painted nails matches  her earrings.
    ‘I was thinking about you last night.’
     As she speaks, she looks into the distance and frowns. Turning back to the man opposite her, she blinks in slow motion, her eyelids lingering closed for a moment. It is an attempt to emphasize her point, to let the last word linger too.
    When she opens her eyes she opens them wide and imagines that her stare is penetrating him.
    He shows no reaction, only nods.
    To push her point further, she screws the pointed tip of her shoe into his shin, staring straight at him. He doesn’t move.
    They stay like this for minutes, her screwing the tip of her shoe, him defiant and still.
    Eventually she gives up.
    ‘Do you like my dress?’ she asks, her voice curling. ‘It’s new. I bought it at the market.’
     ‘Too small?’, he says.
    She turns away, resting her chin in her hand, and smiles. It is the kind of smile where the bottom lip slightly overlaps the top, the kind usually accompanied by a sigh through the nose. It is a kind that says, ‘funny, isn’t it?’
    ‘Why didn’t you come and play on Saturday?’ she says.
    ‘I was busy.’
    ‘Too busy to play?’
    He grabs her ankle hard. She raises her eyebrows in surprise. Once again, they remain frozen like this. After a few beating moments he says to her slowly, ‘This is not a game, my sunshine. You understand?’
    His voice rolls across the table straight into her lap. She looks down, suddenly shy. He lets go of her ankle, seizes her hand instead. He kisses her knuckles one by one, scratching her skin with his stubble.


                                                                                   *


An old man crosses the square, dressed like a teenager, a green ‘M’ stitched on to his baseball cap.     Though Marni is well over sixty, he has the assured stride of someone much younger. He throws and catches a pair of keys, looking about for a familiar face, anyone to catch his eye. He is on the way to the garage owned by his friend Gustav. They have arranged to play cards and drink beer in the back room, but Marni has other plans. He wants to drive to the lake where they spent summers building campfires and strumming guitars. He knows Gustav will agree to anything as long as there’s beer involved.
    He watches two boys ride their bikes. They wear similar caps to him. One goes up on his back wheel and shouts at his friend to look. Marni curses them through missing teeth.
    Marni could tell you stories that would make you blush and pull at your skirt hem. But he is off to find trouble with Gustav, so he turns and leaves you with a wink.



On the beach

Pandora feels like a honey-soaked apricot, all juicy from the heat. She could melt right now and she would taste like a burnt dessert. Her boyfriend sits beside her reading a newspaper. He eats a sandwich and chews it with his mouth open.
    She likes that he is rough and messy. She likes watching him play football and cheering from the sidelines. She knows all his friends look at her and whisper to each other when they pass. She likes that even more.
    Pandora knows the girls at school look at her funny when she wears her favourite denim hot-pants. Her mother says people like that are just jealous.
     Pandora was six when her mother first painted her nails. There are times when her mother looks at her as if she were looking in a mirror.
    Sometimes when she rides the tram, she can sense a man’s stare on her back. It feels like the compressed heat from an open oven door. It gives her a forbidden rush. Occasionally she will feel the touch of a man on her thigh, a faint brush, and the tingle of it stays with her for minutes.



                                                                                   *



Children play with monkey nuts on the pier, their feet dangling off the sides. They bite each one open by cracking the shell, discarding the woody fibres on the concrete floor. Chewing the nuts into an oily pulp, they spit them at each other, aiming for the head, or even better, the eye.
    This game does not necessarily end with swallowing the nut. It is not nourishment they are looking for, it is the prize within the shell. Once the prize is found, that is the end of it. The nut is used only as a vessel for saliva.
    Some of the shells fall into the foamy edges of the sea, and by evening there is a family of them floating, bobbing like overturned boats.



                                                                                   *


 A green headband pulls back Karina’s hair with a strict force. She is reading a book on Michelangelo and is so exhausted that the words jump around the page. She makes notes with a black biro. She doesn’t see anything wrong with that; books aren’t sacred. It is dangerous to put such high esteem onto pieces of paper.
    Things that perish do so unconsciously. When a book is thrown into the fire, it does not scream or try to resist. Even the human body does not resist in the way we think it does. Yes- it holds its hands up to threat, and turns its head away from destruction. But the body perishes in an unseen way, unaware.
    As she reads, she pouts and un-pouts her lips, an unconscious motion. Her lips are moving with her heart, in a way that reminds her that they are still alive, that they are still with the body, yet are unaware of their own inevitable ceasing, of how one day they will part in an accidental surrender, an outlet for the last breath.
    She is on the chapter about his upbringing. Thirteen-year old Michelangelo is being punished by his father because he does not understand his son’s obsession with art.
    Karina once met a man called Michelangelo but he was a plumber and bore none of the immortal quality of his namesake. He had long, curly hair and spoke with a nervous giggle at the end of each sentence. When she told him that Michelangelo was her favourite artist, he responded, ‘You know, I too am an artist. It’s only because people cannot see pipes and drains that I don’t get credit for it.’
    She smiled, touched by the innocence of his joke, saddened by the way it sounded rehearsed.



                                                                                   *


Life on one side of the lens is different to that on the other. It is a life behind glass; the panting of breath amplified in a small box. Outside the lens is colour, noise, commotion. Inside, on the first side, it is still and innocent. It is mere projection of light, the projection of light which has not yet reached its screen. It travels, innocently, then reaches the lens and is met with a clear image. All the eye wants is to be met.
    Grayson has worn glasses since he was three. Sometimes he thinks about what it was like for those three years and is glad he can’t remember. It was life without the lens. It was innocent projection that wasn’t met, left stranded in a space without borders or outlines.
    Grayson still has moments when he wakes up from a bad dream, and feels trapped again in that space. His dreams spread themselves so thick that he forgets to reach for his glasses on the bedside cabinet and all he hears is his breath, slowing and fainting.



                                                                                   *


The book is covered in wrapping paper (African print: red, yellow and green). Old Mister’s hands shake slightly as he turns the pages, awaiting the next word, savouring them like he’s sucking a boiled sweet. The paper is starting to crumble.
    He reaches a paragraph on page forty-two and stops, reads it a second time. It seems familiar. It describes the heroine placing a flower in her hair, getting ready for a dance. The flower is red with yellow seeds.
    He reads the first sentence again- ‘She held the flower, and stuck a pin in its stem as if she were making a daisy chain’.
    Why did it strike him? Where had he seen this before?
    He remembers his sisters making daisy chains when it was summer and the grass was long.     But that wasn’t it.
    The words were tugging at a deeper memory, one that had become lodged under the rubble of other, more painful memories.
    He doesn’t notice but his grip has tightened on the pages. The image of a red flower being fastened on to a pin...It was so clear to him. He couldn’t imagine any of the women from his past doing something so exotic.
    What it stirred in him was like love in a dream; a tremor from an earthquake, leaving no mark, but felt in the body.
    He scratches his neck, the folds of his skin tremble slightly at the touch. His throat feels dry and scratchy like he’s swallowed a hair. He makes himself cough, it only gets worse.
    In his mind, the woman fastens the flower on to a thin scarf tied around her head and leans down to check herself in the mirror, lifting her eyebrows to get a better look. He watches in the background without her noticing.

INT/EXT: collaboration with Ellie Green

‘Sometimes I walk through crowds
    and pull down my hood as far as it can go’


                                                                     ‘Last night I dreamt that I was telling everyone a story                                                                               but no one was listening - no one let me say the                                                                                                                                                     punchline’
                               

‘I try and do things that will make me melt a little,
 give me nice quiet feelings.
Those morning moments - sunlight - coffee - just you awake’

                                                                                                                                 ‘Soaked with sweat                                                             I danced up close to everyone - as close as I could - I did - 
                                                          I needed it - but I left hungry - the true thing wasn’t there’


‘I sat on the bath’s edge -
it all felt so deliciously helpless my wet face my wet arse
the cold bathroom. There was something so beautiful in giving up’


                                                                                               ‘The sickening crunching and tightening                                                 that happens when you neglect yourself - travel far from yourself -                                 travel far away into other people’s bodies. I’ve been on holiday for too long’


‘I need to strip everything away -
lose my layers -
turn away from the sun -
so I can build myself again’

                                                               ‘What scares me most is living a dull life, one of seclusion,                                        one where I choose to be upstairs creating a cocoon to prevent any love                                                                              from penetrating me, leaving me naked, unarmed’


‘I fear the path where I lose myself,
become heady and withdrawn from routine,
choosing powder and the dwindling promise of adventure
that gets old and lost over time’


                                                                                                                  ‘I seek the world, I embrace it’
‘I seek myself, I embrace my knees...
                             ...I bend my knees’                                    
                                                                                                                                      ‘I open the door’

        ‘I bend my head’                                   

                                                                                                                                 ‘I call out -’

                ‘I look inside’                                        
                                                                                                        ‘I look outside’
                       
                       
                                                                          
                                                                           I see me




In this project, we wanted to explore the idea of 'self portrait'- representing personality through an image - subjectivity in art. Because of the collaborative element, Ellie painted the image from a face-morph of us both. We also find it interesting that we're the same personality types, but I'm the extrovert type, and Ellie's the introvert, which connects to this whole idea of inner and outer worlds, two opposing concepts which we have attempted to blend together. The words to go with it is a dialogue between the introverted and extroverted self which then become one.

Cynical/Romantic

For those bipolar in their affections

First

We catch eyes like a match to fire,
dish out hands that tingle,
linger,
on the smalls of backs.

Seashells open and wetten, 
Driftwood stiffens with blood.

                                                    
                                                       (do you catch my drift?)

A whole sea
where the slightest ripple 
of a cheek-twitch, a tongue-flick, 
makes waves.


Then

The immersion-
quasi-nurturing-
almost damning.

We flebb and ‘oh!’
and grind til slow
in the cradling orange glow,
mischievous in its fleeting hold.

The moment smiles at us like a child burning ants, 
knowing that they look at the light and think it profound.


And finally

It’s like a favourite word backwards. 
Morning dullness
exposes cartoon boxers,
yellowing teeth,
football posters.
We are struck by a stomach-ache,
a bad memory in the groin.
The bed that was once the antithesis of time 
is now mortal
with springs poking out. 

________________________________________________________








(As if) on the edge of a cliff, reading a love-letter

The paper crackles
as it bends and straightens
as the corners turn in on themselves, 
submit in a violent flow.

My hair covers my face
 -like reeds before a pool- 
obstructing the view.

Wailing gales blow centuries away, 
there is only one present.

And I could be anyone.
I could be grieved with passion 
with heathers scratching my ankles,
crouching down amongst them, 
hearing my chest pump,
pressing my red-cold fingers against the paper
(dirty nails).

Each word stirs me.

I could be...
on the edge of a cliff,
the wild sea beneath,
grey sky above,
gulls like alarms, 
vanilla-smell of yellow gorse.

And I feel the paper 
against my cheek 
as I kiss its texture, 
kiss it into me,
and I think of myself 
as not myself
but as the sea. 

Assorted Poems

Morning lovers (a somonka)

I woke up early,
I watched your face as you slept,
your eyelids flickered
and I wished to dream with you
but I waited patiently.

Warming the darkness,
your heartbeat radiated
to tell me softly,
that if I was to wake up,
I would smile back at your smile.





________________________________________________________

Laughing it off

I laughed it off when you told me you were dying.

In my smile lay gaps, sticky holes, where I’d eaten too much sugar
where the dentist skimmed over.

I laughed until my stomach convulsed,
it spasmed like the final spin
of a washing machine
and I rumbled.

I laughed until I cried.
You were the one with the tissue.
I tore it up and made it snow 
on to the carpet
and let the snot dribble down
until I sniffed.

I laughed with my hand
covering my mouth.
It echoed- you covered your ears-
I thought of shells.
I started to crunch them
between my teeth
to make sand, a beach,
a saliva-sea.

And all the while
you lay deathly still.





________________________________________________________






To face the day

The effort it takes
to open the lid-
let light bring its necessity
(its urgency)
So hard to ignore the seeping warnings-
dripping in like drops of dew
spilling on your morning.

The stones you break
as you surrender- to say-
that this is just another blueprint day
Clogged up with aftertaste 
of some shook-up dream
The snow settles at first alarm
and the glass is gone to air.

The effort it takes
to get up
dress yourself
to hide naked truths-
they seer at dawn,
wane with the climbing hours,
disappear at midnight,
when you are stripped again.






______________________________________________________________






Restaurant Dining

I ate too much pork fat.
I felt sick in the taxi, slumped forward,
too full of red wine and roses.
Too rich for one evening-
you treated me like you always do-
I forget the gentle way you care about things
the careful cogs that turn in you.

I mirrored you- uncertain-
showing what cracks look like on a person.
I mustered shy,
whispered in hoarse tones
to turn on the taps.

‘I miss you’ I said
to the future you.

We projected ourselves
onto balconies in Berlin
sky high with the washing line
drinking coffee
yours black, mine white.

I complained,
you bounced back with something soothing.
You attempted to soften me,
smooth the creases,
warm me like an iron.
In essence, in vapour.
In a warm bath sculpted
by our desire to fuck.

When my rawness is cooked through,
tell me,
I can be your restaurant muse.

Greasy Spoon: short story

Greasy Spoon

There she is, my Russian Doll, tearing up a baguette like it’s something her mother baked. She sits on the chrome stool with her legs dangling down- does she know what she’s doing to me? With her brown bob, messed up from the wind outside, from the ancient winds in Siberia.

I want to see her eat meat and get her teeth bloody and dripping. I would catch ten moose for her with my spear. I would lay down the corpses in our kitchen and she would gasp and call me her warrior.

Can we be cold together? Can we warm up by the fire? 

Look at her licking her lips, my rural Russian Doll. She doesn’t suit being lit up by a strip light, it’s too clinical, she deserves the soft light of a fire, not this buzzing wheeze. She looks at me- darts her eyes over- hauls them back in embarrassment. Yes, Doll, I am not as pretty as you. I scare you, don’t I?

But back in your cottage in the snow, where your ancestors passed down their seeds to make this work of art that is you, I would be what you need. I am rough, I am unafraid, I am searing with the desire to tear and gnaw. I would be your warrior and you would love me and lie in your sheepskin bed, keep it warm for my return, and I would show you what a warrior can do.

She is fidgeting, waiting for someone. I want to go over and scratch her neck, lick the crumbs from her lips and do all those things that lovers do. She knows I am looking. I want her to feel it, how it feels to be stuck over here in my corner. Sentenced to rot in this plastic chair, sticking gum underneath it to mark my days. The Robinson Crusoe of the greasy spoon.

I avoid looking at my own reflection, but my Russian Doll is enough of a mirror. She is squirming in her seat, checking her phone.

And here, she is saved by a phone call. It is her grandmother, saying she needs her back home to look after the cattle, be the milkmaid she was always destined to be. Milking udders in the chilled barn, clouds of breath forming as she sings.

I am dancing to your song, my rosy-cheeked Doll.

And now, she is gone like a dream. I see her tighten her coat around her as she takes one last glance in my direction and we lock eyes. Mine tell her everything but she turns away and carries on up the pavement, trailing breadcrumbs behind.

They always leave me, those Russian Dolls. Left to fade like a dying heartbeat, and all twisted around my cup. The coffee’s gone cold.
 

Something squeaks behind me, I am not alone. It is the Window Cleaner with his sponge. We are inches apart but he doesn’t notice me through the soapy screen. I watch as his arm moves up and down. He is here with his bucket again, cleaning dirt no one can see. With overalls three times too big for his winter-tree frame. You could snap if you’re not careful, Window Cleaner. There are harsh and bitter winds out there who have long forgotten to respect the dying. They’ve existed far longer than you have and will break your bones to grind for snow.

He limps to the bus stop after every shift, reaches into his pack of Old Holborn and breathes in the stale comfort he’s known since childhood. I can see a strand of tobacco now stuck to his bottom lip like a stray pubic hair. 

Poor old Window Cleaner, I’m sure they all say. Huddling by his electric fire with a microwave pie at six o’clock. But no one can smell the dark stories behind old age. Yes, they smell the cabbage and the mothballs, but do they smell the guilt-stench that leaks from his eyes?

I smell it, I see it. I know your type, old man, with all the plastic trust of an uncle. I see you glancing at that young boy there when his mother turns around to reach in her bag. I can see you salivate, I’m sure you’re hungry. No one to feed you since your wife died. Keep on looking, I won’t tell. I will only wish for a happy accident when you cross the road.

Now the window is clean, he has paid for his sins today so he squeezes the sponge dry until his knuckles are white. He pours the bucket and lets the grime flow down the pavement like a lonely river, and I am exposed to the outside once again. He spasms a smile in my direction, I look up from under my eyebrows. 

Your time will come and there will be nothing to clean.

All these people crowding in here to fill up on chips, gorging on beans to forget. No one notices me because I fit; like a plug in a sink, I slot into my corner, look on to another day. Scratch my beard and cradle my cup. Watch the other low lives blend into beige walls. This place puts a plaster on our grazes but it doesn’t take them away.

Here she comes, Fat Waitress with her tight seams and butter-breath. Edging between tables like an arcade game. Watch out for that table- it will cost you ten points!

She stacks the plates that have been there for half an hour, steals a sly piece of bacon. She tosses a quick eye around the room to make sure no one is looking, and dips her finger in a pool of yolk. 

You wear your body like a coat and yet you shiver. Under those creases and folds and handfuls of flesh, what is left? 

One summer years ago, you tasted something sweet and irresistible. For two hot weeks you ate and ate, days of adolescent limbs and grass stains, tangling yourselves in the reeds. He said he loved you, didn’t he. And you blushed back with a sweaty brow, believing it. All those hours amounted to one, where he drove off and left you on a gravelly path. Since his saccharine lips there’s been nothing so sweet. 

She winces as she bends down to pick up a fork. A strand of dust-blonde hair sticks to her forehead and I shudder at the way it clings, so wet and taut.

Fat Waitress and her nail-bitten hands, clutching on to plates of food and eyeing them up as if it was that sweet summer memory being served. Chewing her cheek as the man in leather touches her arm and orders his breakfast. Nodding her chin in to her neck, yes love, of course.

I see her squeeze past my table every day. She always shakes as she hands me my cup. I make a point of looking at her face to make sure she knows that I am watching. That she cannot hide in her suit of flesh; armour padded from long nights in front of the telly, fingers resting in warm pies. I am resting in your stomach, Fat Waitress, mingling with the acid and moving with your slow pulse. I am there to remind you that you are not alone.

In this place, you have company. Each crowded table is a constellation of the same people day to day; they too have summers wrapped up like tissues, kept in a pocket, long worn. 

By now it is late morning and crowds pile in, blocking my corner. I raise my cup in the 

direction of Fat Waitress and turn it upside down to show that I’ve ran out of coffee. Her head hovers behind a large man standing in front of me. She takes one glance at my 

empty cup, me holding it, and turns the other way. Shuffling all the way to the counter at the far end, she tugs on the cashier’s apron strings and whispers in her ear. 

She knows that I see her, that I hear her rasping some nervous complaint. It is time to leave, I have seen enough for one day. I am stuffed to the brim with the white noise of voices, and faces that peer on, mouths full of sausage. I feel under my chair and count: twenty one days and still a castaway. 

Stud vs. Slut: Sexual Double Standards (an article)

Recently, a friend told me that he has decided to remain celibate for two months, the reason being that he ‘gets bored of girls quickly’, and wanted to give his vigorous libido a rest in order to fully appreciate the next pretty young thing that comes along. I wasn’t troubled at his inability to remain monogamous, or his disposable attitude towards women, but rather, the freedom he had to express these things without being deemed a ‘slag’. I asked out of interest, ‘So what would happen if a girl stood up and said the same? That she too got tired of the same men, so was always on the look out for some fresh action?’
My friend confirmed without hesitation, yes, she would seem a bit ‘easy’. This double standard is so subtly ingrained into our culture that people are not even shocked when you point it out.

Obviously, since the rise of the contraceptive pill, women have the chance to be more free with their sex life, eliminating the risk of pregnancy and therefore being able to share their beds with whoever they want, whenever they want. Sex shops such as Ann Summers have become the norm, there is no shame in buying a gadget designed purely for pleasure. Women’s magazines frequently boast ‘the hottest sex tips’, encouraging us all to channel our inner sex goddesses (as well as become great cooks). So no one denies that women like sex. However there seems to be an impression that women’s sexuality is not wild and innate, but submissive, only occasionally simmering into action with an outside male influence.

Everyone knows the cliché that men think about sex every seven seconds, so therefore treat them accordingly. Well of course he’s cheated on that girl, you know what men are like, they think with their dicks! Why do women not get the same excuse of thinking with their vaginas? I am not commending infidelity in any way, but I am highlighting the bias there is towards men when they make reckless decisions based on their horniness. Men get a slap on the wrist and a jovial piss-take, women get cast out of friendship groups and labelled damaged goods. There is an ignorant image of men being totally helpless when faced with the promise of sex, meaning it is in the woman’s hands; does she initiate it? Is she the one acting keen? It is the same issue that is dealt with when rapists say that women are ‘asking for it’ by dressing provocatively. Even that term, ‘provocatively’, insinuates a lack of control on the male side, as if the woman ‘provokes’ a man into a dumb, glazed-over state of arousal. 

The media, as always, is a powerful and insidious influence on social prejudices. Consider the rule about ‘not sleeping with someone on the first date’, drilled-in by numerous rom-coms and teen dramas. OK, if the guy is a total arsehole then he might perceive you as being ‘too easy’, but then he is clearly not worth pursuing. There’s no reason why your captivating personality and sexual confidence can’t entice him into a second meeting. Why can’t women be strong and independent whilst wanting sex? Why is there this idea that a woman ‘let’s’ a man have sex with them, as if it is a chore or a commodity, and more worryingly as if the ability to abstain from a few hours of fun means you are worthy of a relationship? I am not advocating careless, self-destructive flippancy towards who you share your body with, but a clarity and strength towards what you want, and having the courage to act on it.

All of these issues I have encountered through my own personal experience, so what if we look at it from a more scientific angle? I recently read an extract from Daniel Bergner’s new book, ‘What Women Want’ where he describes an experiment investigating sexual arousal in men and women. Participants of both sexes were shown various pornographic videos, of straight couples, gay and lesbian, and bonobos. The blood flow to their genitals were measured at each stage, and they were also asked to rate their level of arousal. What is interesting is that the women were aroused- physiologically speaking- at every clip that was shown, yet denied that they were turned on by them all. The scores for the men on the other hand matched up completely, their bodies and minds were in tune. This suggests that there is much more to female sexuality than we might think. Bergner suggests that this indicates a suppression of desire, stemming from the conviction that women are not as inherently sexual as men. This belief has subordinated women in society for centuries.

Women’s sexuality is not a commodity, it should not be objectified or used as an indication of moral worth. We need to start viewing women as sexual creatures too, not just in the context of male satisfaction, but with deep-rooted desires that deserve to be fulfilled without judgement. 

Family Friend: short story

Family Friend

It was twenty years ago that Jeanette moved in to our family home. It happened slowly and secretively, like when you are outside in winter and suddenly you realise it’s pitch black. The light fades without you even noticing. 

I remember one morning when I was thirteen, getting my breakfast ready before school, I saw Jeanette sitting at the table in one of Mam’s t-shirts.

‘Morning’, she said.

I mumbled a reply and carried on buttering my toast. I tried not to look at her. The t-shirt was so small that I could see a strip of her knickers peeking out at the top of her legs, which were sprawled across one of the chairs. She was reading a newspaper and kept glancing up at me. Although I was used to her coming round for cups of tea with Mam, I still felt uncomfortable in her presence. She was different, not like the other women I had met, which consisted mainly of aunts and teachers. She had short, dark curls and wore loose fitting clothes. As I gathered my school books and got ready to leave she tried to make conversation.

‘Another day in school? Bet you can’t wait to get it over with! I used to have to wear a uniform like that, absolutely hated it. Although you’re lucky, you get to wear trousers, I had to wear this skirt up to here with long socks. Awful. And to make it worse I had the hairiest legs.’ 

She must have been embarrassed because she took a large sip of tea and choked on it. I didn’t know what to say. I thought it was strange that she was there, in the morning, sitting at our dining table. I wondered where Mam was, and whether Jeanette had her own bed. 

On my way to school I was followed by a feeling. I couldn’t stop thinking about what I had seen that morning. There was movement in my belly, like being excited, or sick, but more sludgy and foreign. I passed the houses that I saw every day without really looking, the route was so familiar that my eyes would glaze over in a sort of trance. I was on my own, as usual, so my thoughts dripped uninterrupted, tapping my skull.

When I got home, Dad was in his armchair. Dad worked at the docks shifting parts for the ships which were built there. He was a short, robust man with a bald head and a forehead which made a shelf over his eyes. His skin was like a pig’s; thick and tight with light hairs bristling their way out. He never missed a day of work, so when the shipping company began to cut down his hours he became even more difficult to be around. Whenever I got home from school I would turn the key as slowly as possible so as not to wake him. If I was lucky, he would be asleep in his armchair, snoring in animal bursts. The TV was always on, a tiny window of black and white shadows which never held my attention for long. On that day, he was wide awake wearing a scowl. I noticed he had started smoking again. He had his back to me so I didn’t say hello. Big spirals of smoke seeped like gas from his chair and I held my breath.

‘Paul? Is that you, boy?’

He turned around to face me.

‘You been in school?’

‘Yes, Dad.’

‘Where are your sisters?’

‘I dunno. They walk a different way to me.’

‘They better not be loitering.’

I fiddled with the zip on my coat. I wasn’t often in Dad’s part of the house for long. It was technically the basement, so it was always dark, and smelt stale because he ate his dinner down there. Mam would usually clean it but they had been fighting so the room grew dust and its own particular stench. 

‘Come and tell me when dinner’s ready. And get that bloody woman to shut up, will you. I can hear her from down here, she’s been cackling away all afternoon.’

That meant Jeanette had stayed. Dad always referred to her as ‘that bloody woman’. Once I heard her call him ‘that oaf’, so I figured it was a fair exchange.

As I walked up the stairs I could hear voices in the kitchen merging with the clanging of pans. I never thought of Mam as a talkative woman until Jeanette started coming over. Mam always seemed quite shy, even in front of me and my sisters, but now she would hoot and howl like the women outside The Four Crosses. 

‘Oh, hiya Paul! Do you want a cup of tea? A biscuit? Food’ll be ready soon, mind. Come in and take your coat off.’

I walked into the kitchen which was more like a steam room. Jeanette was at the stove stirring a large pot of soup and Mam was sat at the table opening a bottle of wine. Her face was shiny and red and I felt like I was intruding, they were both smiling at each other. 

‘Hi Paul, how was school? Sorry, what a stupid question, I used to hate it when people asked me that. It was like, duh! Of course school was boring!’

I looked at a spot just above Jeanette’s head and said it was fine, thanks. I could never look in her eyes. At least she was fully dressed now.

‘Paul? I need to tell you something. Jeanette’s going to be staying here for a few days, the builders are doing up her porch. I hope you don’t mind. She’s a much better cook than me, so I’m sure you won’t!’

With this, they erupted into cackles, just like Dad said. They looked like they were floating around the kitchen, they must have been drunk. Jeanette turned the radio on and started moving her head from side to side and stirring to the beat. I got that same feeling I had on the way to school, like my stomach was beating instead of my heart.

After that, things changed. I don’t know what happened to Jeanette’s porch, perhaps it was never fixed. Either way, there was a lot more laughing and wine drinking. Jeanette was always there. I asked Mam whether she had a job, she said yes, she was a writer, although I never saw her write anything. Only read the newspaper and drink cups of tea in the kitchen all day. Mam was a nurse and did a lot of night shifts, so Jeanette would make dinner sometimes. Mam was right, she was a good cook, she would make noodles and curries with foreign vegetables. Dad would always grumble when I took his plate down to him, he’d say, ‘that bloody woman and her spices, she’s in Cardiff not Calcutta.’ 

Slowly, surely, the house became Mam’s and Jeanette’s. Posters began appearing on the walls, of temples in India and sunsets behind mountains. Mam started dressing differently, her clothes became looser and more colourful. Me and my sisters saw less and less of her. I even had to cook for everyone once, while Mam and Jeanette went on a walking trip. Dad refused to do anything, he said he was a working man, and that all I did was sit at a desk all day, so I should make dinner. I said why can’t my sisters do it but I could see his blood simmering in his head so I shut up. I made baked beans and scrambled eggs, all burnt. The whole house smelt charred, and I spent at least half an hour scrubbing the pans. We all sat around the table for a change, me, my sisters and Dad. We didn’t say much. As we chewed in a silence broken only by slurps of tea, we heard something slam outside, and voices, distorted. I had finished my plate so I got up and looked out the window.

There was an eight o’clock film over everything, an opaque blue, obscuring any detail. I could make out two figures directly below, to the left of the streetlight. They were locked together, kissing, stroking, then my chest seized up and I tried to breathe but something was lodged, in my throat, in my mouth, a nauseating panic. I recognised the car, it was Mam’s. Behind me, I heard Dad clear his throat.

‘What you looking at?’

‘Nothing’, I said, closing the curtains, shutting my eyelids.

But it wasn’t nothing. We heard the front door open and footsteps up the stairs. I saw Dad’s defeated expression as he left the room, and for the first time in my life I saw him as a tiny man, tormented and gnarled, riddled with spite and trapped in his basement. He had never looked so helpless to me, and when Mam and Jeanette walked in with their rucksacks and cold-bitten cheeks I could barely stay to say hello. That night I tried all the usual tricks to get to sleep; I hugged my knees and counted to a hundred, but nothing could distract me from those figures in the dark. Images came to me, uninvited, of legs entwined and knickers strewn on the floor, laughing faces, wine stains. I was alone in a house of women. Dad had deserted me, he used to ruffle my hair and coax me into playing football but now he stewed downstairs. All I had were my sisters, who were a year apart and much younger than me, and my Mam, but she had a new friend now. I was so quiet that I could have melted into the wallpaper, I watched life unfurl but there was nothing looking back.

I can’t say for sure whether I was ever happy, but during Jeanette’s stay I sank into a crippling stupor where I could barely speak. Each minute of her presence and each word she spoke became a part of the mud in my stomach, the dirty feeling I had become used to. When she touched Mam I turned away, when Mam said her name, I would tense up. This pattern went on, and down and down, for a whole year. I could not help but think that Mam wished she’d never had kids, then her and Jeanette could move away somewhere and Dad could fester undisturbed.

One day, a Sunday, I walked downstairs and Mam was crying at the kitchen table. She was wearing an old dressing gown, the flannel material looked like moss. Everything seemed to sag, her hair, her posture, and I resisted the urge to go and put my arm around her, it was too late for that sort of thing, she had become contaminated to me. Besides, she never touched me anymore. I stood at the doorway, silent. I watched. After a few minutes of listening to her punctured wails, I turned around and went back to my bedroom. I had fantasised about Jeanette leaving, and the whole family reuniting, Dad would move back upstairs and would start work again, Mam would make us picnics like she used to, we would even go on holiday to Cornwall, maybe in the Summer, I would be nicer to my sisters, we could play together again, I could bring friends home from school and no one would ask who my Mam’s friend was and why she lived with us. In reality, her absence only added to the sense of deflation that spread through the house, through the air vents, out the taps. Things were never the same again.

The last time I saw Jeanette was at Mam’s funeral. She sat directly behind me, her sobs outweighed mine. I still couldn't look in her eyes.