Tired (First Prize,
Reception (Runner-up, DT
Arvon Poetry Competition 2000)
Company (Brando’s Hat, Summer 2000)
Snakes
and Ladders (The Rialto, Summer 1999)
Making
New Materials (Lancaster Lifest
Anthology, 1999)
The Singing
Lesson (First Pressings, Faber 1998)
As
if in the school sick room with the sound of the secretary’s heels
on
polished wood fading away, the dials on the old teak wireless
turn
and it tunes in once more to a voice with the pitch and fall
of your mother's.
The needle scrolls through
you
get off the tube at Holborn or somewhere, after trying not to feel
the
breath of someone chewing gum by your ear, and you've hummed
a
slow tune so hard, you're walking it against the street's quick pace,
no
idea the ground you've covered.
Somewhere down my
street, once
a
boy was arrested - his cuffed hands held out like a prayer and the muscles
of
his back stretched as if they might burst into wing and it seemed
the
policeman said hey a little softer
than usual.
And now this girl
knocks
on the door saying, I need to talk to a
woman. Its raining hard,
she’s
no coat or umbrella, and no-one’s around, although through the wall
they’re
singing hymns – you can hear the organ, but not the words.
The
voices she hears come from unseen mouths.
She
imagines the hungry beaks of fledglings,
the gullet stretched and pale. She disgorges
the
few words she has, repeated so often
their
consonants adhere to the vowels
of neighbouring words. Nobody hears.
They’re
waiting for another voice.
She
likes taking his calls, hopes for the edge
of
a word as she connects, or better still
the
red light that says his line is busy.
Later
when the light blinks off, she’ll call
read
the message to him. She’ll picture his face,
close
her eyes to catch the colour of his voice.
He’ll
thank her. Say her name.
Sometimes
with a man, a man she has met
and
shared a meal with, or maybe a film,
she
tilts her face to his, from habit or forgetfulness.
She
imagines tightness at his mouth’s corner,
the
way saliva beads, feels his breath
on her face, his need heavy on her mouth.
She
is wordless, her tongue drawn from her.
His
mouth is different. She can’t tell why. Maybe
it’s
the story he told her about the cricket ball,
the
metal taste of his own blood, the sharp
edge
of enamel, the gum cavity collapsing
under his tongue. Maybe it’s that
ruminant
twist
to the jaw as he speaks, the way
his
lower lip rests on his finger as he listens.
If
she’s lucky he’ll come for a package or a fax
just as the phones have hushed. He’ll lean
on
the high desk and watch as the lazy words
form
themselves in her mouth. Occasionally
the
words tumble from her teeth and tongue
so
fast its hard to wait, to choreograph
all these thoughts, this little time, into a
conversation.
Sometimes
he’ll come and the lines will be so busy
she
can’t even lift her face. Other days
there’s
no faxes, no packages,
or
he’ll pick them up when she’s at lunch.
Or
he’ll be so busy, he’ll never emerge
from
the office she’s never seen
behind the glass doors.
Those
days, she thinks of his mouth moving
as
he talks, imagines catching his words in her mouth,
coming
so close, she’ll touch his tongue
at an “l” sound. One lunch time,
she buys a dress
the exact blue-grey of his voice.
She
wears it the next day, her hair bright on its shoulder.
If
he notices, he doesn’t mention it.
my
great-great grandfather, the clog maker.
He
means to comfort me. Tells me
how
he dragged his family, his
to
through
tiny windows, not like
the
in invitation. How his wife wept.
He
talks about leather and lasts, holds
up
his hands, sinewy, pale,
the
thumbs a little squared. They remember,
he
says, every shoe, like the wooden
base
of the clogs holds every step taken.
A
man holds himself and his family
in his hands. His trade is his home.
In
Only
sometimes, I could do without it.
Those
bad jokes, about finding my feet,
the
way he pffed at my cheap shoes,
the
air whistling around the nails
in his mouth. And wages like they are,
these
days, he sighs. And forever
making
edged remarks
about great great-great grandchildren.
Which is why it was such a relief
when
a friend's great grandfather -
the
cheese-maker turned up at supper
the other night. Perfectly at home
in her
the
fat content of the brandy butter
with that gallic curl to
the lip.
You
could tell he thought us daft.
Amiable
enough though. Quite touching
in
fact, that soft browned hand,
just a stroke from her shoulder.
And
not bothering with the white hat
or
gloves or sliding metal probes
into
the soft core, just breathing it in
with
great noisy gulps. Passing it
to the children to eat from the round.
Neither
man said much,
one
having a mouth full of nails
and
the other testing the camembert rind
with
his teeth, and there being
no
language shared between them -
only
a look, a smile of recognition
and
as we left, a low laugh
that
wisped round the room like pipe smoke.
“We
have been stimulated by a knowledge of the general nature of the unpublished
experimental results and ideas of Dr M.H.R. Wilkins, Dr R.E.(Rosalind)
A Structure for De-oxyribose nucleic
acid (DNA), Watson and Crick,
April 25, 1953
Six to
start
The call to DNA,
to Kings. It
pulls Rosalind from
It’s 1950. She’s young,
walks lightly.
It feels like spring.
Ladder
The skill, to hold each molecule
as if patterned from popper-beads,
in her secret skull space,
to zoom, rotate
predict the spattering left on an X-ray plate
by the ricochet of electrons
on internal surfaces.
Square
to Square
Daily isolation.
She's the only female,
the only Jew.
Denied the soft seats
of the gentleman's dining room,
she must take her food
and wander.
Ladder
This second form she finds,
that coils and leaps from the plate,
that must be glued in place
before examination. It's
the kind of luck
she combs for. She names it B.
Snake
Wilkins. Squirms, hisses
softly at this stockinged intruder,
arches away from DNA.
Begins the quiet transfer
of information to an opposition
she cannot imagine.
Square
to Square
Caution. She
steps carefully,
stacks up her evidence
before she leaps.
Ignores the call
of the charismatic B,
though she sees its double helix.
Finishes the first form first.
Snake
Watson, Crick, handed the plate
that completes the picture,
are struck by inevitability,
take to their tools, piece together
a molecule from sheet metal shapes -
a ladder snaking upward
from their desk.
Square
to square
In watery contemplation
atoms clump to molecules,
attach to each other,
float into position in a framework
and then, when the final fragments
fail to fit, are wafted away.
She’s nearly there.
A
winner
Watson and Crick.
DNA, the double helix.
She admires its easy beauty,
does not recognise her labour
in its backbone curl.
Playing
on
She
hitch-hikes round the dead sea.
Then moves to Birkbeck
college.
Still bomb-torn, there are buckets
under drips. Her
colleagues are Bolshies.
They make her laugh.
She beams her pin prick of light
to the dark world of the virus.
Snake
Deep inside, the quiet transfer
of information from cell
to daughter cell
falters. Her
DNA
is fallible. As it
uncurls
splitting along it’s rungs,
a slip that trips a switch
and suddenly cells divide,
bloom like algae.
Square
to square
She shares her bed
with a wriggle of kittens,
dines in red silk,
rests her bones
in the Crick's spare bed.
Snake
Pain coils across her abdomen,
exposes the shape
and position of her organs,
clear as on an X-ray plate.
Square
to square
At the last, she takes on
the Polio virus,
flaunting the immunity that cancer brings.
She does not lose faith
with a world of test and proof
that lets her slip away.
End
It is not like coming home,
not even like landing
on the final square.
More like the pieces being swept
into the box and the lid shut,
and the dull sense
of having been cheated.
“3/4b: Pupils
should know that materials from a variety of sources can be converted into new
and useful products by chemical reactions.”
GSCE Modular Science
syllabus 1996.
Take
solution A. Decant
into beaker. Flirt
with
it’s chloroform fumes.
Watch
it swirl, sluggish
in
dragon breath curls,
colourless
clear
on colourless clear.
Add
B,
aqueous, hear
its lighter fall. Watch
it
skate across the surface,
settle.
Take a glass rod.
With
the vertical stab
of
a tailor’s stitch,
plunge
through fluid
to
the partition
of
A and
B.
Lift
straight
and true
the
way you lift
a paint-oiled brush.
No
drag. Slowly.
Something
has congealed
like
custard skin
on the rod. A line
leads
to the source
between liquids. Balance
the rod on beaker. Twirl
between
thumb and finger
like
a magicians wand.
Steady.
A
and B
constantly meet
react,
are drawn to the rod.
The
thread winds even, smooth.
This
is nylon.
My
heels dimple the thick polythene sheet,
but
leave the Chinese rug beneath untouched.
I
tuck my bag neatly beneath the polished table.
She
makes me ning my scales, feeling the bridge of my
nose
for vibrations. When I am more
advanced
I
will be permitted to ning-nu. To do so now
would risk displacing the voice from its seat in
the sinus.
She
hammers with one sharp nailed finger.
It
is a cheap piano. She does not like my diction,
unstrings the guts from my gs. My ings no longer
ring.
Later
the tape recorder rattles on mahogany
My
small voice resonates. She is pleased.
She
teaches me to breathe, raising the ribs of my back -
a
heaving bosom, as she says, would be too disconcerting.
I
concentrate, hold my breath, let out a steady stream
that
would bend but not snuff a candle flame -
and
fart. She is not disconcerted.
she
charges on a sliding scale. In the hall
her
stroke-skewed husband gives me sweets,
the
old half sighted dog shuffles his rolling belly into my hands.
She
watches me, as I descend the terraced garden.
Birds
are singing. I hum. I can feel the air in my lungs.
The vibrations in the bridge of my nose.