(her): a Prose Poem

I broke this one up into paragraphs to make it more user-friendly (because I think that way it'll get more comments. Oh yes. I'm quite ruthless like that).

(her)

 

day breaks after your argument. she wakes at twelve, fitful, sore-eyed, and deletes your emails from her inbox. then a shower. she cuts her finger on a razorblade and the skin peels off but it does not bleed. she dresses, eats lunch, wraps her finger in a bandage.

 

her mother drives her to her grandmother’s house. the pontoon road is sheer and yellow in cloudless november daylight. they listen to kate and anna mcgarrigle singing kiss and say goodbye, singing heart like a wheel, singing the swimming song. he is flying in from the continent tonight. the expectation blooms in her shallow throat. the fear of expectation. she probably won’t see him until tomorrow. she thinks of all the emails she deleted from her inbox and she misses you.

 

at her grandmother’s house the trees have been cut back and the roses are rotted on their stems. sunlight stares through bare branches and dead leaves. inside it is warm, dark and curtained. they  eat fruit pastilles. they look at photographs.

 

her grandmother in 1942. july in glenisland, her summer arms wrapped round her knees, her dark eyes and ringless fingers.

 

her mother in 1978. a photo booth in tottenham court road, and she had just had her hair highlighted, and she and her friend smiling breathlessly at the camera, all scarves and buttoned cotton.

 

herself in 1992. enniscrone. the sea glistening invisibly behind her. the tiny woollen hat. the fleshy baby face, the dimples in her knuckles. sucking her thumb.

 

the tall stride of her mother’s eldest brother. the french wedding. the first colour in 1966: pink and blue seersucker dresses, tanned legs. the tropics of lesotho, where her mother lost her engagement ring in the indian ocean.

 

they put away the photo albums and she goes to the bookshelves. her uncle’s college thesis. more photographs. a crumbling newspaper clipping of her grandfather’s gaelic team. a dictionary of flowers. she slides it out and thumbs through it, making bouquets in her head. for you: anemone, wormwood, geranium rose. hydrangea which means frigidity, heartlessness, vanity, thank you for understanding. sweet-pea which says goodbye. forget me not. for him: forsynthia, wisteria, primrose, peach rosebud and blue salvia. viscaria for will you dance with me?

 

darkness runs its fingernails down the sky. rain-stars on the windshield. in the car going home they listen to the strokes and they are singing the modern age singing someday singing hard to explain. 

The Waiting Week

I was recently tagged with a lovely meme by the lovely Dave at Pics and Poems. I have never done a meme on this blog before, and as it is of a vaguely personal (I mean as opposed to artistic) nature, I'm not sure I could come up with anything interesting. While I encourage you to go and see what a good job he's made of it, here's some more poetry. 

Unusually for me, this follows a pretty strict metre, which the enjambment kind of wrecks at a lot of points. I'm sure you'll spot them and shake your head in disappointment. Other than that, enjoy.

(And although I am still considering that meme, I may as well mention that the following contains at least seven separate facts about me...)

The Waiting Week

 

The windscreen wipers in my father’s car;

my sister conjugates French verbs in time

with indicator’s rhythm. Foggy stars

of brake lights on the school run: your exams

will start tomorrow and I know you are

staying home to study for them now.

I think of you, asleep, your mouth still slack

unturned by morning’s curtain-light alarm –

outside the winter daylight bleeds grey-black.

 

Biology. We study respiration.

Rain licks the windows and I think about

Sucking your fingertips. Such education.

My best friend laughs and all is damp again

nail-varnished and sweet-smelling like shampoo.

Next we have Maths, and I imagine you’re

examined, asked to name the points and turns

the sultry coefficient correlation.

Outside: the sycamore, the gorse, the ferns.

 

On Thursday morning you are flying out

to Belgium with your Public Speaking team.

I talk to my Careers teacher about

the universities and plans and details.

I sit and watch the paint as it peels off

the outside drainpipe. Nothing inside stirs.

I would rather tell her about you

how you speak such lovely Irish, and about

the words you use, the pretty things you do.

 

In school this week, I’m restless and daydream

about your school tie and your shoulder-blades

and your Toyota Highlander. I mean

I don’t know what to think. I am uncertain:

a floating retina, a dislocation.

But still, I find the happiness in this

potential. This uncertainty of fate.

The question: firm, remaining to be seen

the week: irresolute, not yet too late.

 

Something of this remains when it is done –

and anyway I cynically suspect

it would not be so thrilling, if begun –

this sense of ambiguity and hope

that you might bring me gifts back home from Belgium

and I would call you up on Sunday night.

If I could always have this same ability

to know we are unfixed, unhooked, undestined

surrounded constantly by possibility. 

Mathematical Poetry

Here's a poem which reflects how much I listen in Maths class. 

Solve For y  The Equation Reading…

 

I will calculate our probability,

the biological likelihoods.

We could be charted on a graph:

you are a parabolic curve and

I am analysing our points of intersection,

using my same old variables.

 

Let x equal the distance between us

when we dressed up for Halloween

the axis between your drivers’ seat

and my fingers on your back window.

Let y be a metaphor for attraction

the eye contact, that Coronas song

the tennis courts at night

when we counted the money with the others

and remembered how we met.

 

Dissolve me into numbers and allow

this probability. Let us equal one another:

constant for variable, x for y.

Prose Poem

I don't think I actually know what a prose poem is, but it sounds like it should be something like the following. I like this piece, but I'm not sure what it's for or actually what it's about. Enjoy anyway.

* * *

she will go home and abuse the keyboard with drunken confessions of love and apologies even though she is not drunk. what other excuse to remind him that she loves him even though he is miles away, what other way to say that she remembers the time he got drunk and called her at two in the morning and woke her up and didn’t have anything to say. her friend’s cigarette smoke makes her itchy and restless. she is flooded with a faint urge, a sudden and quiet desire. she thinks about being attacked outside the marquee here, beyond the patio heater and the pool of yellow shed light and she imagines how deeply her nails would sink into someone’s skin, how she would break his fingers and kick his shins and gouge his eyes out with her hands. waiting for something to happen. the light revolves on the ceiling in shades of primary. a lit cigarette tip. a stiletto heel. a small hole in the side of the white marquee that lets in the darkness. a flooding of the synapses, the distant sound of thousands of neurons firing within her own brain. outside, waves of hailstones pass the streetlamp like a black ocean cresting in the light. she shivers. the dj mumbles into his microphone. her best friend is kissing someone and nobody knows who he is. an empty bottle rolls toward her foot. someone standing on a table showers the room with dutch gold. it forms a tiny pool on her bare shoulder and glistens in the revolving light. blue yellow. blue yellow red. she could run out of the marquee with hailstones nicking her bare arms and taxis spitting at her feet and not stop until everything was different. a firework screeches outside, writhing on the ground like a wounded animal. they crowd toward the marquee entrance. she watches over their heads. it screams toward the sky. it is green. she will not pretend to be drunk tonight. instead she will say that all this is worth something, even if she does not know what it is worth, even if the one she loves is miles away. even if it seems that the only thing worth loving about him is that uncrossable distance. 

5.11 (Poetry)

Being as I am directly in the middle of my Christmas examinations, I thought it would be a splendid idea to write a poem. It is a simple poem in three parts. It's not quite finished, I'm happy with one of the verses and unhappy with the other two. See what you think anyway.

5.11

 

1

I waited up last night for the early call from Virginia

and this morning I heard the news.

I am different in this radio static

today, the beginning of Christmas exams

and somebody lighting firecrackers outside my school.

 

2

There is a parcel waiting at lunchtime

labelled Air Mail. I tear it open. Six copies

of the book inside and my name is on the cover.

The solipsistic joy of letters

how suddenly your name means more when it is

printed in some font that’s not your own.

 

3

And you send me a message on MySpace

to say that I should come see you sometime.

Let nothing ever stop this sense of reaching out

this endless connection, this effortless tide of

being, of being more than one. 

Hard to Explain

As mentioned in my last post, I have been working on a little something, which contains a lot of other somethings that have previously been posted here. It's called Hard to Explain, after The Strokes' song rather than the plot, and it's currently running at about 35,000 words long - should end up somewhere near 40,000, which I think is acceptable short-novel/novella length - and the first few chapters are really the only ones that make any sense at the moment. Feel free to assure me that they do not. Here's number one.

Edited to add: And here is number two. 

1

 

He had condensed everything into a suitcase. As if when he had decided what to bring and packed it all away and zipped it up, that would be it. Even though he knew that this was not it – that this was hardly even the beginning – it was still something, it was a thing, and because it was the only thing he could think about, he thought about it a lot. He made a list of clothes, and another list of other things that were not clothes. He packed and unpacked and packed everything in a different geometrical pattern so he could fit an extra sweater.

The phone rang in the kitchen and he heard his mother pick it up.

His checked shirt from Gap. He never really wore it any more, but still. Could it go in one of the side pockets?

“Jared?” she called, while he folded the checked shirt up very small.

“Yeah?”

“Matthew’s on the phone, sweetheart.”

He left it on top of the suitcase and went through to the kitchen. Everything in the apartment was mirrored. He saw his mother’s angular frame reflected fifteen times at once while she ate noodles at the kitchen island. He held the receiver to his ear.

“Jared?”

“Yeah, man, what’s up?” he said.

“You want to go to that movie tonight?”

“I can’t, really. I’m basically going to bed right now.”

A short pause. “What time are you flying out?”

“Like seven. From JFK, so that’s like, whatever, an hour’s drive. So yeah.”

“Shit, man.”

Jared smiled. “Yeah, I know.”

“Well, listen. We’ll all miss you and everything.”

“Don’t be a fag just because I’m leaving the country, Matt.”

“Right,” his best friend said, laughing. “Well, you know I’m just disappointed that I didn’t get any from you while you were here.”

“I’ll be back next year, you know. Also, my mom is in the room.”

“Am I on speakerphone?”

Jared looked over at his mother. She was still eating noodles with her back turned, but in the mirror her face betrayed nothing. He swung the receiver back toward his mouth. “Sure.”

“Did I ever mention your mom gives great head?”

“No. Although everyone knows your dad does.” He heard Matthew laughing again, and it made his stomach hurt. “I better go, man.”

“Sure. You get your beauty sleep. Hey, have a good flight tomorrow.” Another pause. “Take care and all.”

When he’d hung up, his mother looked up from her noodles. “Are you going to bed, honey?”

“Yeah.”

“Goodnight, then.”

The Gap shirt wouldn’t go into his suitcase. He left it out. It was the kind of thing he would probably end up missing. He switched the light off and lay wide-eyed in the New York dark, listening to the sirens cry outside. The city would move on, swallowing lives and coffee cups and loose change, spitting up yellow cabs and record stores. The hacking, wheezing city, with its bloodshot traffic-light eyes, its nicotine-stained boulevards. It would not wait for him.

Jared was afraid that nobody would.