after Vilhelm Hammershøi, Interior 1909 June, and the ceremony begins. The catch on a bedroom frame is first – unlocked, the handle lifted, stiffened hinge eased to a different angle. The hairs on her bare arms stir themselves a little, do not quite rise – there is no thrill here, simply air on unaccustomed skin. […]
PNWinter16
Getting out
Afternoons. We walk in the gardens. She’s heavy on my arm. The Systemic Beds match her jacket, the last of summer, mauve and purple. She poses there, threadbare, her back collapsed, neck craning forward. Sitting by the water, she tells complicated stories that didn’t happen, or might have done once, in another year or place, […]
Wild Life
Nearly thirty, and I might be ready for a grandparent again. I dream of infinite staircases, burgundy carpets, smooth banister posts topped with acorns. Butterflies pinned in flight, eggs on the picture rails, on the treads, in the soil. I loved you at five, collecting Pachyderms and Reptiles, Great Cats and Bears in the basement, […]
‘My name is Legion: for we are many’
My favourite miracle – the casting out of devils from the cut and howling man who lived in tombs above the town. It cast them into swine, a panicking that sped the herd to drown themselves like lightning in the sea. I feel for the townspeople, the lawful, who thought the madman unbearable trouble until […]
Self-Portrait with Secret
i This could be the outer door. It’s heavy and hard to open. Behind it, another, and mother, an absence I cannot enter. She came home at the end of summer. The brightness. Scent of lavender. I am running, longing to embrace my mother. ii Six weeks. Two foster homes. I share a bed […]
First Ball
He is gone behind the peeling pavilion where there is neither teasing nor sympathy, only weeds, rubble, and the first slight snub of rain. Useless to say there will be worse things one day (a parent dies, a woman leaves) and better things (a woman stays, a daughter lives), or that in another country war-caught […]