exposure

Wanting me to know that he has not always been

as he is now, that he has a past,

he takes a blurry black and white photograph

from the sticking sideboard drawer

and smoothes it on the table cloth

with a blotched, unsteady hand.

It is him, sixty years ago,

eyebrows still thick and arched but darker,

glossy brogues catching the light,

posed stiffly on a nameless promenade

and by his side, clutching his arm,

a woman not his wife.

I ask who she was and what went on.

Quietly, he tells me of the time when she undid

the tight knot of her hair, unwound its coils,

let it tumble down in front of him, then slowly worked

a crackling tortoise-shell comb through its golden length,

knowing that he was there and watching,

not telling him to leave or look away.

I sit in silence, not understanding,

waiting for a punchline that never comes

while he, half a dozen decades away,

peers down at the wrinkled paper as if trying

to see to the bottom of a muddy stream,

now and then flicking specks of dust

from a shoulder, a wrist, an ankle

as slim and finely turned as the stem of a goblet.

Published in Stand, Spring 1999

Sunday afternoons with uncle Augustus

It was a matter of time till he brought out the sketches,

the washed out Polaroids, the battered maquette,

the tattered rolls of yellowing plans.

Sometimes, when he talked, we could almost see it –

the Great Hall, the palm house, the attic observatory,

the vaulting canopy blazing with gold –

but really we knew how it all would end:

home alone, a bottle of spirits,

a moonlit dance on the powdery rafters.

Published in The North, Spring 1999

the débutante’s ablutions

Every night, we watch her through the keyhole,

washing her hair in eau-de-Cologne,

fanning it dry with a peacock feather.

At breakfast, we talk of how the days melt together,

like the sugar lumps liquefying on the stove

that she applies to her lashes with the tiniest brush.

Published in Poetry Nottingham International, Spring 1999

the lament of the aquanaut’s wife

It is not enough to simply lie there,

two starfish pinned to your bubbling chest.

See how the others do cartwheels and handstands

in the crashing foam at the water’s edge.

You no longer hold your breath at my bedside.

The clockwork whale you gave me has drowned.

Now all I have is a renegade octopus

whose tentacles tickle the tip of my tongue.

Published in The North, Spring 1999

the bishop’s demise

We soaked his secret diaries in brandy,

set them ablaze, watched the words take wing.

After breakfast, we set up the cameras

as the orchard filled with novitiates

with butterfly nets and killing jars,

clambering amongst the whispering leaves,

their ears stopped up with candle wax.

Published in Poetry London, Autumn 1999

midnight at the seminary

Madame de Valois’ convent girls

are making maps of the netherworld,

naming boulevards after their lovers.

In cafés on unbuilt esplanades,

gentlemen of leisure bide their time,

measuring their assets with sugar spoons.

Published in HQ, Spring 1999