Issue 13: January 2007

Simon Barraclough | Dean K Farrow | Valerie Josephs | John Stiles | Tim Wells | Dean Wilson

SIMON BARRACLOUGH

The X-ray Room

This is small beer; at worst a chipped orbital bone.
But the silhouette of crown and brow,
black as space, thrown against the metal plate;
the segmented camera craning back to shoot

its payload of photons through my skull, fill me
with projected fears. It’s not this injury
but the ones to come: shadow-puppets figured
through the lamps of my eyes, leaning on crooked canes,

batting at murderous crows, dancing for Satan
under full moons, shedding their skin like clothes
and stepping down into their graves at dawn.
“I’ve been brave!” says a fading teddy bear

brandishing balloons on a sticker designed
to help kiddies through the ordeal. Maybe I have.
For the next head-shot I lie back on the trolley.
My first thought is to hand back the black leaden mat

she places so carefully over my crotch.
“All clear.” she beams minutes later. I’m almost sad
to leave so intimate a place. I hurry past
an open door where a CAT scan machine lies in wait.

 

In Bocca al Lupo

The airport has closed; the trains are frozen
        to their tracks. The Alps cold-shoulder me and drop

a winter's weight of snow into my lap. With my grappa headache
        I lounge on grammar books and flick channels

to find a rare documentary: free from hot pants, toupees, wet t-shirts.
        On a map of old Europe I watch the habitats-like a blasted tumour-

of the grey wolf, shrink. Shot, poisoned, built
        out of existence and fucking up its DNA with the feral strays

from the towns padding into the countryside.
        Mist bristles its coat against the French windows

and I'm off again, making a little sleep
        to while away this time away from you, while

the hotel car park disappears, the footprints of the Bergamaschi
        are written off for the day. Hooded, you slip through a distant door,

your basket laden with casoncelli; yellow cakes with marzipan larks
        pecking at the sponge; and a flask of local red:

for you, when you tire; for her, as she births into your snow-white hands.
        The television bathes me in static blue

and I glimpse you at the window, face floating in the mist, nails
        scratching the glass, red lips fuller than of late.
                Your basket melts a patch of stone on the step, stirs with the life inside.

 

Italian Verb Drills

A dozen dancing declensions to partner;
unfailingly I choose the wrong ending,
uncoupling the remote past and embracing
the simple future, which dissolves in my clasp
leaving only its ivory opera gloves.

Originally from Yorkshire, Simon lives in London and works as a freelance writer. He won the poetry section of the London Writers Competition in 2000 and has published in various magazines and anthologies, including Poetry Review, Time Out, Magma, The Manhattan Review, Graphic Poetry, and In the Criminal's Cabinet.