DUFFY, Carol Ann

In Mrs Tilscher’s class

You could travel up the Blue Nile

with your finger, tracing the route

while Mrs Tilscher chanted the scenery.

”Tana. Ethiopia. Khartoum. Aswan.”

That for an hour,

then a skittle of milk

and the chalky Pyramids rubbed into dust.

A window opened with a long pole.

The laugh of a bell swung by a running child.

This was better than home. Enthralling books.

The classroom glowed like a sweetshop.

Sugar paper. Coloured shapes. Brady and Hindley

faded, like the faint, uneasy smudge of a mistake.

Mrs Tilscher loved you. Some mornings, you found

she'd left a gold star by your name.

The scent of a pencil slowly, carefully, shaved.

A xylophone's nonsense heard from another form.

Over the Easter term the inky tadpoles changed

from commas into exclamation marks. Three frogs

hopped in the playground, freed by a dunce

followed by a line of kids, jumping and croaking

away from the lunch queue. A rough boy

told you how you were born. You kicked him, but stared

at your parents, appalled, when you got back

home

That feverish July, the air tasted of electricity.

A tangible alarm made you always untidy, hot,

fractious under the heavy, sexy sky. You asked her

how you were born and Mrs Tilscher smiled

then turned away. Reports were handed out.

You ran through the gates, impatient to be grown

the sky split open into a thunderstorm.


The Devil’s Wife - Medusa

I flew in my chains over the wood where we’d buried

the doll. I know it was me who was there.

I know I carried the spade. I know I was covered in mud.

But I cannot remember how or when or precisely where.

Nobody liked my hair. Nobody liked how I spoke.

He held my heart in his fist and he squeezed it dry.

I gave the cameras my Medusa stare.

I heard the judge summing up. I didn’t care.

I was left to rot. I was locked up, double-locked.

I know they chucked the key. It was nowt to me.

I wrote to him every day in our private code.

I thought in twelve, fifteen, we’d be out on the open road.

But life, they said, means life. Dying inside.

The Devil was evil, mad, but I was the Devil’s wife

which made me worse. I howled in my cell.

If the Devil was gone then how could this be hell


Mrs Midas

It was late September. I’d just poured a glass of wine, begun

to unwind, while the vegetables cooked. The kitchen

filled with the smell of itself, relaxed, its steamy breath

gently blanching the windows. So I opened one,

then with my fingers wiped the other’s glass like a brow.

He was standing under the pear tree snapping a twig.

Now the garden was long and the visibility poor, the way

the dark of the ground seems to drink the light of the sky,

but that twig in his hand was gold. And then he plucked

a pear from a branch – we grew Fondante d’Automne

and it sat in his palm like a light bulb. On.

I thought to myself, Is he putting fairy lights in the tree?

He came into the house. The doorknobs gleamed.

He drew the blinds. You know the mind; I thought of

the Field of the Cloth of Gold and of Miss Macready.

He sat in that chair like a king on a burnished throne.

The look on his face was strange, wild, vain. I said,

What in the name of God is going on? He started to laugh.

I served up the meal. For starters, corn on the cob.

Within seconds he was spitting out the teeth of the rich.

He toyed with his spoon, then mine, then with the knives, the forks.

He asked where was the wine. I poured with a shaking hand,

a fragrant, bone-dry white from Italy, then watched

as he picked up the glass, goblet, golden chalice, drank.

It was then that I started to scream. He sank to his knees.

After we’d both calmed down, I finished the wine

on my own, hearing him out. I made him sit

on the other side of the room and keep his hands to himself.

I locked the cat in the cellar. I moved the phone.

The toilet I didn’t mind. I couldn’t believe my ears:

how he’d had a wish. Look, we all have wishes; granted.

But who has wishes granted? Him. Do you know about gold?

It feeds no one; aurum, soft, untarnishable; slakes

no thirst. He tried to light a cigarette; I gazed, entranced,

as the blue flame played on its luteous stem. At least,

I said, you’ll be able to give up smoking for good.

Separate beds. In fact, I put a chair against my door,

near petrified. He was below, turning the spare room

into the tomb of Tutankhamun. You see, we were passionate then,

in those halcyon days; unwrapping each other, rapidly,

like presents, fast food. But now I feared his honeyed embrace,

the kiss that would turn my lips to a work of art.

And who, when it comes to the crunch, can live

with a heart of gold? That night, I dreamt I bore

his child, its perfect ore limbs, its little tongue

like a precious latch, its amber eyes

holding their pupils like flies. My dream-milk

burned in my breasts. I woke to the streaming sun.

So he had to move out. We’d a caravan

in the wilds, in a glade of its own. I drove him up

under cover of dark. He sat in the back.

And then I came home, the woman who married the fool

who wished for gold. At first I visited, odd times,

parking the car a good way off, then walking.

You knew you were getting close. Golden trout

on the grass. One day, a hare hung from a larch,

a beautiful lemon mistake. And then his footprints,

glistening next to the river’s path. He was thin,

delirious; hearing, he said, the music of Pan

from the woods. Listen. That was the last straw.

What gets me now is not the idiocy or greed

but lack of thought for me. Pure selfishness. I sold

the contents of the house and came down here.

I think of him in certain lights, dawn, late afternoon,

and once a bowl of apples stopped me dead. I miss most,

even now, his hands, his warm hands on my skin, his touch


Shooting Stars

 
After I no longer speak they break our fingers                                    

to salvage my wedding ring. Rebecca Rachel Ruth

Aaron Emmanuel David, stars on all our brows

beneath the gaze of men with guns. Mourn for the daughters,

 
upright as statues, brave. You would not look at me.                              

You waited for the bullet. Fell. I say, Remember.

Remember these appalling days which make the world

Forever bad. One saw I was alive. Loosened

 
his belt. My bowels opened in a ragged gape of fear.

Between the gap of corpses I could see a child.                                    

The soldiers laughed. Only a matter of days separate

this from acts of torture now. They shot her in the eye.

 
How would you prepare to die, on a perfect April evening

with young men gossiping and smoking by the graves?

My bare feet felt the earth and urine trickled                                     

Down my legs until I heard the click. Not yet. A trick.

 
After immense suffering someone takes tea on the lawn.

After the terrible moans a boy washes his uniform.

After the history lesson children run to their toys the world

turns in its sleep the spades shovel soil Sara Ezra …                   

 
Sister, if seas part us, do you not consider me?

Tell them I sang the ancient psalms at dusk

inside the wire and strong men wept. Turn thee

unto me with mercy, for I am desolate and lost.       

Warming Her Pearls

for Judith Radstone

Next to my own skin, her pearls. My mistress

bids me wear them, warm them, until evening

when I'll brush her hair. At six, I place them

round her cool, white throat. All day I think of her,

resting in the Yellow Room, contemplating silk

or taffeta, which gown tonight? She fans herself

whilst I work willingly, my slow heat entering

each pearl. Slack on my neck, her rope.

She's beautiful. I dream about her

in my attic bed; picture her dancing

with tall men, puzzled by my faint, persistent scent

beneath her French perfume, her milky stones.

I dust her shoulders with a rabbit's foot,

watch the soft blush seep through her skin

like an indolent sigh. In her looking-glass

my red lips part as though I want to speak.

Full moon. Her carriage brings her home. I see

her every movement in my head.... Undressing,

taking off her jewels, her slim hand reaching

for the case, slipping naked into bed, the way

she always does.... And I lie here awake,

knowing the pearls are cooling even now

in the room where my mistress sleeps. All night

I feel their absence and I burn.