Delph's back

[delph_ambi]

Now let's see if I can remember how to do this...
1. Miner's Wife
2. Careering Down the Hillside
3. instant gratification
4. A Clerke in Holy Orders
5. Last Word
6. We're In the Orchard
7. I Did Not Sleep With Your Wife
8. in the grey of the morning
9. fall from grace
10. still married after all these years
11. The Game
12. Blame
13. Five Years
14. weasel
15. Fixing Things
16. Death of a Hand
17. Balancing Act
18. The London Season
19. Ice-Jam
20. Ice
21. Ants
22. Bile Beans
23. Twenty-eight Meditations On Finding A Street Piano
24. Departure
25. what we should have done, what we didn't do
26. now we are old
27. Echoes of Old Love
28. Song
29. Erosion
30. Councillor Jenkins

[delph_ambi]

miner’s wife

red kites, black faces, the smell of clouds
low on the mountainside, and you, emerging
filthy, spewed out of the dark, and the birds
wheel overhead, a pony slips, its leg fractures,
and I think this will make you cry, you never cry.

I am on the outside.

this is my face, you never see it, I have my life
in books, you can’t read.

you come home, you’ve been drinking, I try
to tell you I’ve seen red kites, I try to explain
using words like exaltation, you look away.
Your father, his father before him, all the brothers.

Eastertide, and the preacher comes across the hill,
I go to listen, he is on fire, I am cold. at home,
I get down on my knees and blacken the range,
I think of red kites, I think of air, I think of you
continuously, I sew by oil light, I live in a dull glow,
a half life. you come in, your face lit from the side,
dust-grimy, beautiful.

[cookala]

strong start here! good images and story telling. powerful. a great start to napo!

[Arlene]

as always love your narratives -- you paint stories with images and whole characters with one or two very carefully placed adjectives.

[delph_ambi]

Thanks Arlene - and thanks for the reminder yesterday

[delph_ambi]

Careering Down the Hillside

He’s a senior clinical psychologist, somewhere
a woman is singing; it is breaking him.
Stones scatter down the hillside as he runs,

he throws one hard, wrenching his shoulder.
Her voice is a ripple on the night, he is daytime,
solid and whole, he will not let her do this.

He kicks a tuft of grass, a toad squirms out,
limps away, he stares, horrified at
the dangling leg, wonders if he should

stamp out its life. He turned down promotion
in order to stay in this town, he told her,
she left. He reaches a stile, the knotted wood

consoles him, robust, smooth with the years.
He will never marry now. death is an option,
but the chemistry of dying revolts him,

the seepage, the slow growth of toenails.
This day is too full of light. Celandines
open and glory in the sunshine. He grinds

them beneath his heel, curses the sky.
Next week, he’ll wear a suit, attend meetings,
be quiet and kind, and his dreams will be smaller

[Donner]

Hi, Catherine,

Oh, the tough choices in life we have to make (or confine ourselves to) and how dreams often shrink because of them. Great narrative - I thought the section about the toad was particularly effective, in part because the mythology surrounding toads and frogs - and the ending is fittingly sad.

If nothing else, these lines:

death is an option,
but the chemistry of dying revolts him,

the seepage, the slow growth of toenails.

need to be kept. They're terrific.

Donner

[delph_ambi]

Thanks Donner. Great link to froggy things. Didn't know the half of it.

I agree about the keepers.

[delph_ambi]

instant gratification

two years old
splats in a puddle
tiny fingers
play with water

twig reflections
shimmer and fracture
branches re-form

shakes his head
curly red hair
dungarees darken
water soaking
slaps the water

little girl
gripped by mum’s hand
dragged along
sees the puddle
wails her grief
her envy
mum pulls harder
full of fury for the man who fucked her
three years ago at a party in Fulham

puddle king
stands up
twists round
frowns at his soggy bum
looks at the girl
the mother

sees a puppy dog
claps his hands

[vmh]

Hi Catherine: I love the strong contrasts at work in The Miner's Wife. In Careering, you really capture the effect one can have on another. Such strong images too.

I just love Instant Gratification. You so wisely show how boys can become men, and how girls become women. Raising children to be exactly who you raise them to be. Well done!

The brutality of A Clerke is so sharp. Taking a "date" to a massacre. And then N leaves him there. Both sides can play the game. So good.

permed away from her face
so that every scowl
is in full view

I've seen that person! What a great painted image! But that's no surprise coming from you!

You've really got a wonderfully complex dark thread going on, and I will be back. Thank you!

Vicky

[delph_ambi]

Thank you all for such fabulous comments!

[delph_ambi]

We’re In the Orchard

in love, when the old man says,
“The longer the tree has lived,
the sooner it’s going to die.”
We stare at each other, awkward,

Jonas says, ‘Don’t worry – Granddad’s
always full of such shit.’ He bites his lip,
and a robin starts singing,
looks down from an tree with Eve’s eyes
and we’re back in paradise, spring, tight buds,

I recognise the fruiting spurs;
the shape of the branches, straight
for leaves, stump-gnarled for blossom.
I reach up and touch, sap rising.

Granddad tugs on Jonas’ sleeve.
“She’ll do, get in quick” he says.
His breath is cider and throat rot, the sun
baking hot for April, the burr
of a bumble bee buzzing.

[Mike M]

These are so visual, so immediate. Miner's wife is lit like a Dutch painting. Some of the most vivid images are hard to stomach - I like "the seepage, the slow growth of toenails," and the Clerke is just brutal, spitting and bubbling like porridge. But so much is tender and human and also visual and immediate, "twig reflections / shimmer and fracture, / branches re-form" is particularly good, and I also liked the beard like Fidel's, and this: "I reach up and touch, sap rising."
Great stuff. Painterly, vivid, and such a breadth - thank you for these.

[PClem]

Miner's Wife is chockful of all kinds of conflict - the relationship, competing focus, the grimness versus beauty. So well captured.
Careering - I enjoyed this unraveling of a man, but don't think the profession matters to the tale.
Clerke - grimly fascinating.

[kristalynn]

I really like Miner's Wife, especially the last stanza. The detail of the face lit from the side especially.