Delph's back

[Scrow]

"Still Married' is the one with images that have stuck with me since reading - the 'slime', and the smell of fabric conditioner. However, my favourite of the latest poems is 'Blame': clever and funny. I love the ending - the picture of mamil (middle-aged man in lycra), the hidden brutality, the sense of 'truth' about it, and the ending. Really clever, really witty, harsh, and a lastingly good read.

Sarah

[Arlene]

storytelling in poems, the old-fashioned way... love still the very first, and through the thread, the narrators and their stories, their characterizations of the people the Ns are speaking about, so real and vivid...page-turners

[shadygrove]

Grey of the Morning and Blame -- both strong as that coffee ought to have been, and there's a killer close on Still Married. Enjoyed the visit!

[JFN]

Catherine, really enjoyed miner's wife. The way the first stanza is one long run of images works nicely.

instant gratification has a sudden and surprising change of voice half way through. My daughter, coming up three, will splash in any puddle she sees, so I enjoyed the imagery at the start. The simple language reflecting the simple childish enjoyment works nicely too.

We're in the Orchard is an interesting interaction between young and old. I particularly liked His breath is cider and throat rot, as a strong and unpleasant image, or scent I suppose.

It's that a double entendre I see at the end of in the grey of the morning. There's more strong imagery in here with all the sourness of breath and milk next to the bitterness of coffee. Enjoyed this.

knit cathedrals / from varicose veins is lovely. My wife used to work for NT so have done the tours.

Still Married... is vivid and dark in places. It slips so sublimely from image to image. And the story has another chapter in Blame. Nicely done.

I don't think you need the last line ofWeasel, it's said in Dammit, but we were alive once. Another good story in this one.

John

[Steven]

'fall from grace'...very nice.

It's nice when you read a poem that expresses something that you haven't been capable of expressing yourself, or haven't got round to.

I live in a country where there is a painful lack of cultural, historical heritage because it's all been ripped out by colonialism or volcanic eruptions --- people look on England as an oasis of culture.

In contrast, your poem gets across the 'home view', that it ain't that special, not worth preserving, load of old rocks etc.

I think the poems effective because it gets you to weigh up your own point of view and identify or disagree with the speaker.

It's also interesting in the light of the current decimation of historical areas in the middle east, which is causing people to weigh up how much value it has.

[delph_ambi]

Many thanks to everyone for the thoughtful comments. Very much appreciated.

[delph_ambi]

Death of a Hand

She could cope with him not being there.
Nothing wrong with the day; she dropped kids off at school,
came home, got out of car, slammed the door shut, broke her hand –
at first, no pain. Stared at it, thought: I didn’t really do that.
Then wave upon wave, the shaking, the lurch in the belly, eyes watering.
Staggered indoors, staring. The hand wasn’t hers any more, a swollen thing,
she refused to know it. Nearest A&E, fifteen miles away. Couldn’t drive.
999? No, not an emergency, just the death of a hand. Couldn’t type,
couldn’t write, couldn’t wipe her bum after a shit. Other hand, yes, but –
you spend all your life using one, how do you...
why was she even thinking this? Get on a bus. Go now.

She reached in her bag to get her keys,
a hot wave of agony shot into her head,
she staggered against the door, knee twisted, more pain,
could barely breathe.

Spring – birds shouting at each other, flowers
bursting out of buds, grotesque and over-sexed.
Bastards the lot of them, not giving a flying fuck,
here she was, dying. Get up, get up.

She wanted a drink, she wanted a fuck. She wanted
to cut off the thing that throbbed and swelled
at the end of her arm. Pain and sex. Christ. Really?

Cars came and went. She counted. Promised: after sixty cars
she’d get up off the ground. Half an hour later,
up to twenty-six, mind wandered, couldn’t remember the number,
thought she’d have to start again. The hand HURT.
She should write about it. Use the pain.
Couldn’t write. Wouldn’t ever write ever again, wouldn’t drive

wouldn’t wipe her bum. Needed a crap. Damn.

Stood up slowly, carefully, tested the knee, it held,
reached into her bag with her other hand, found keys, turned the lock,
door wouldn’t open. Crap.
Wrong way. Wrong hand – turn other way. Think.
Poor hand.

She shoved the door shut, sat on the stairs, looked at the hand,
wept for all the losses, the heartbreak in the world
that had ever been, would ever be.
All the lost love. He wasn’t there.

[delph_ambi]

Balancing Act

Sainsbury’s caff, Friday morning,
I’m watching a man with no teeth eat a cream bun. Wife
works her way through the crosswords in all the newspapers.
Fat bloke strokes the crumbs off his belly. Eager mum,
sundressed child fly into lift with trolley. Ceiling’s
a mass of vents and pipes, an old James Bond movie set,
something Parisian by Le Corbusier, silver and white;
the digestive tract of the building. I eat, they eat,
the building eats us, spits us out. Padded bloke shovels in
all day breakfast. He’s happy. This is all true. I need
to get away from the truth, but it’s difficult. You don’t help.

My life’s about waiting in corners. Yours is about escape.
It’s quiet beneath the roar of the air con, incessant 80s muzak,
click-click of cutlery, honk of a man blowing his nose. I drink
my coffee, wonder if you have any idea, if you’ll ever stop running.
Sometimes I think you’ll stay, then you’re gone again, terrified

Granny tempts child with shortbread, Victoria sponge,
chocolate muffin. I’ve got an apple turnover. I eat round the edges,
the cream squeezes out, lick, small bite, lick, small bite,
a balancing act. I don’t waste anything. Sticky fingers –
I wipe them with the soggy serviette that’s already dealt with the coffee
I spilt on the tray, then I wipe my fingers, now damp with coffee,
on the handkerchief I blew my nose on moments ago.
Problem, solution, problem, solution, always ending on problem.
I finish my coffee and leave. I know you won’t be there,
but if you ever come home again, I’ll be waiting with my lies.

[delph_ambi]

The London Season

Mrs Charles Johnston poses by a tree in Kensington Gardens.
She would like you to know
that she is related to General Balgration. You look blank.
War and Peace she says and she looks slightly to the left, slightly down.
You are dismissed. You carry on snapping.
She is unnaturally thin. The tree looks coarse and heavy next to her.

Mrs Christopher Sykes poses in St James’ Park
in a sunray pleated skirt and flared basque; you daren’t ask
about her ancestry so you mention the hat instead. It’s from Venice.
She burbles on about Venice and all you can hear are her tortured vowels.

There’s a steady wind and the sky is pale. Today,
the mannequin wears a large dead animal and stands, just so,
against a bombed out building. You don’t speak.
You’re not sure if she can or not. You don’t know what she’s on,
but her hair is sunny.

Tonight, you will meet gigantic, fantastic women,
smoking cheroots, laughing like horses,
with teeth like camels and tongues like giraffes. These women
won’t know much about penguin sleeves, they will have
no concept of the buttoned plastron. These women will be men,
most likely, but you will be drunk and happy.

[delph_ambi]

Ice-Jam

The brooks are frozen, airports closed,
I turn on the radio, water comes pouring out,
tepid, shorting itself in a matter of seconds.
The electrician is out of contact, crossing
a stream on a pig with no name, seeking a serious
tempest of mountains. I remember
the Helsinki Bus Station theory and stay
on the train, riding the current to Omaha.

We disappear in the dead of winter,
our songs remain mayflies and cannot
be heard. You were right, my dear, even
when you were mad, when the attic
room was rich with soft light.

Of the thirteen ways to love you,
I had mastered seven, when out of the blue
I remembered my father playing football, and me,
a girl, deciding that when I grew up
I would be a boy, beloved of many a waitress.
I am old, Father Henry, with too many
layers of paint, I live in a shoe. The day needs
plasterers, boluses, hymns. We used to camp
on the way to Maine to watch ice-jams and saints,
the best of times and the shittiest..

[Scrow]

Hello,

'Death of a Hand' is emotive, but it's thoughtful, too, and I empathise with N as she sits on the stairs. All the details are good ones, and it's the vivid transportation to another person's world that really works for me here. Absolutely strong and believable.

'Balancing Act' is interesting, and I like how you use the supermarket cafe environment to story tell about N - N's reflections and their situation, half-mirrored in the thoughts of those around.

I love S4 of 'The London Season' - the surreal vocabulary and how the echoes of London Zoo echo the women in their caged poses. Glorious.

Ice-Jam - The echoing of Carroll in S3 is fun, plus the fairy-tale conceit of 'shoe'. The whole thing, for me, reads like a surreal fairy-tale (and I like surreal fairy-tales). S2 has some gorgeous imagery to boot, and there are points in the rest, too (crossing/ a stream on a pig with no name) which are stand-outs too. Story-telling at its craziest and best.

Sarah

[delph_ambi]

Thanks Sarah! Suffering from a minor virus at the moment that sent my temperature shooting up to 102 yesterday, which could account for the surreality of 'Ice-Jam'. I had absolutely no idea if it would make any sense when I wrote it. Glad it did.

[delph_ambi]

Ice

Granddad used to deliver ice round Soho cafés;
huge great chunks wrapped in hessian,
carried them on his shoulder. Dapper –
always in waistcoat and tie, because that’s how it was
back then. He’d nod to Tony Abbro on Old Compton Street,
bump into world-famous escapologist, Alan Alan,
who we’d never heard of, but we liked the name.
After work, he’d go back to his gaff
over the shop a few doors down
from Senefft’s Seaman Service. Used to scare us
with grisly tales
about the Limehouse murder.

Oh my God that is so long ago now.
Can’t bloody believe it.

I’m fucking old now, and if I want ice
I go to the fridge and get out a tray of cubes,
can’t get the fuckers out so Mildred says
run them under the cold tap, I do, they fall
into the sink, I try to pick them up,
they slip out of my fingers, so fuck that
for a game of soldiers.
I’ll have me drink without.

Don’t grow old. It’s fucking horrible.
Granddad was supposed to get his ice from Toni,
but he didn’t. What do the kids say now?
‘Harsh’.
That’s it. We never saw Granddad again.

[delph_ambi]

Ants

They’re crawling up your cherry tree to farm the blackfly.
You squash one with your finger.
Look at the finger.
No mark.
You squash another.
Still no stain.
The ants speed up.
You need to match them.
You hit the tree with the palm of your hand.
One ant is squashed,
you see the evidence.
The others disappear.
Nothing moves.

Then everything moves,
they start running again,
you slap at one –
some play at statues,
others throw themselves off the tree.
You notice the ground is a heaving mass.

Higher up the tree,
the young leaves curl protectively round herds of blackfly.
You think about insecticide and ant killer,
you think about the way you tut-tut over anything that’s not organic.
You think about your fury when the ants escape,
you are filled with bloodlust.

Earlier you spoke of your disgust over trophy hunters,
you were eloquent about the difference between killing for food
and for so called ‘sport’.
You cannot eat ants,
not these tiny ones.

You start squashing again,
becoming more skilled.
You wait.
Strike quickly.
Stand very still.
Strike again.
Kill.
Over and over.

The sun beats down.
There are things you should be doing indoors,
but you stay out here.
Somebody might be keeping a tally,
but you don’t care.
This has to be done.
They were farming the blackfly.

[BrianIsSmilingAtYou]

Ice and Ant are both quite good.

Of the two, I prefer Ant for the psychological angle, how the narrator recognizes the incompatibility of her actions with her disdain for killing for sport, but keep on doing it.

And the end :

This has to be done.
They were farming the blackfly.

In Ice, there's "Tony" near the beginning and "Toni" near the end; is this right?

BrianIs AtYou