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NPC 2007

Ray Charles Visits Suite 1, Radiotherapy Department, Christies Hospital, Manchester, England

Looking at the ceiling day after day? the Siemen’s air-conditioning vent, protruding speakers, lights, the sound proof panels, she tolerated the radio’s monotonousness until today when, out of the blue, Ray Charles dropped into the room with ‘What’d I Say?’ and she followed his every word, each bluesy chord, the entire pulse of him wondering […]

Powerpoint

I have circled the planet. Above the tawny land of my ancestors, the Arc of the Covenant on its holy mountain, I saw the inside of a cotton bag yanked down over my head; at my wrists and ankles percussion of steel, blood and the links’ negation. Oh my grandfather in the Emperor’s palaces!   […]

My Year of Culture After Kathleen Ossip

We’re walking home late from the theatre, my lover and I. She’s wearing pearls and a linen trouser- suit ? it was a ‘well-made’ play. Sweetheart, I say, the writer drank snake blood for inspiration. She flicks her tongue.   We’re lying in bed reading the supplements, my lover and I. I’m wearing yellow socks; […]

Much After ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ Act II, Scene 3

I heard a shout from my master’s orchard. Boy! a man called. He did not know my name. Not my master ? a guest called Benedick. I ran to him. I said, Signior? I watched and waited. In the window of my chamber lies, he said, a book. Go fetch it quick to me here […]

Reflection, July 1938

All day and night you tread water in a well, hear soldiers shooting, burying groaning bodies on the mountain. When the bucket rattles down, you dive. Near dawn an exhausted conscript shines a torch.   He’s drunk. Hello, he calls in posh Moscow Russian. Hello, you mouth. Disappointed there’s no echo, he frowns, shakes his […]

Missing

First, Charlie Chaplin as a runner bean ? there are seven of him. You can’t tell which bean he is. They all have hats and turned-up shoes, wear tight jackets that are pulling, wrinkled slightly. These look-alikes don’t make the catalogue ? maybe Charles Jones who photographed, arranged them side by side, had never seen […]

Body Sonnets VIII: The Magdalen

Cresting the gradual stairs in the Museo Del Duomo, you come to the Magdalena, who is nearly a river of hair. Here clothes, if they be clothes, Donatello has ragged to tresses that leave her only more bare ? snaking the bight of her thigh’s line, giving rib into hip ? in their tumbling watery […]

Coming Down to Drink

What beasts are these coming down to drink at the shallow pools in the river bed? The drought has drawn them out.                         And now the herdsmen; two, three. One squats; the others stand leaning on their spears. They do not watch the herd. Their eyes rest in space. A breeze rises, stirs the grass […]

Flat Dad

I’d taken out the bones so that he settled easily, dropping into a lazy S, unless draped -as now- across a bench, or hung – yesterday – from a branch. Wherever I choose to rest and release the weight of him, I am careful to keep intact the parted tuft of soft white hair. I […]

Encore, Mr Fox!

monsoon         oolong         spoon … Reynard lies along the garden wall smoking. ‘I thought you were a cat,’ I say. Reynard takes off his i-Pod, sits up, arranges his brush: ‘Sorry, would you like one?’ And he takes out an egg-shaped case and opens it. It’s full of feathers and chicken skin twisted into the shape […]

The Hairdresser from Beirut

He’s been here two years. I wonder if the others ask as I do not, why he left, or of all places, why he chose our well-meaning suburb. We sit before his mirrors, him behind, or to one side. He’s still young, and slim with a little belly. His hair curls where it will. I […]

Through the Square Window

In my dream the dead have arrived to wash the windows of my house. There are no blinds to shut them out with. The clouds above the Lough are stacked like the clouds are stacked above Delft. They have the glutted look of clouds over water. The heads of the dead are huge. I wonder […]

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