Issue 9: March 2005

Ian Duhig | Annie Freud | Mark Granier | Heather Holden | John Stammers | Matthew Sweeney

ANNIE FREUD

A Voids Officer Achieves the Tree Pose

At times she thinks that what she really
ought to be doing with her life
is somehow the decision of the ether;
she'll make a film about an early time
before thought or cloth, or pity or desire,
when all was flabby, all obscure, half-baked
until the moment when a silk-worm sank its jaws
into the fibres of a mulberry leaf.

As a delaying tactic, she bangs another Frenchman.
They meet in a bar so crowded, that after shouting
for half an hour at one another, they take a taxi
to his place. She has had to repress her dismay
at his jacket and when at last it's off and she touches him,
she recalls the final parting with her therapist —
someone who'd wear a shade of lipstick that repugnant
must lack the judgement to be worth the fees.

Choice-based letting's just a phrase
to make you think that things have changed;
this is a life lived in a lunch break when
all your desires have been pushed away
and something — a word or thought — suggests
a whole new set of possibilities
and standing on one leg, in prayer, she knows
her real deficiencies have yet to flower.

The Things We Do

There are many things I ought to do,
and I'd do them if it wasn't for Le Pevroque,
the tiny cinema where stark tales of sex and death
beguiled me in the many rainy afternoons
on the velvet pointillism of the screen.
I have tried to have a system and I do have one or two;
on the cover of this notebook, I have written
'Only Poetry'. I have stamps. I have a plan
for a display of Streptocarpus on your window sill.
Each day their graceful sufficiency will underline
the things we do and the enumeration of our intentions.

The Symbolic Meaning of Things and Reasons for Not Dying

I stood at Centre Point, soaked to the skin,
fighting the habits of my filthy mood,
when suddenly, in the street's ecstatic fugue,
I knew that it was you I had been thinking of,
and with a book about Velasquez in my hands
open at the Old Woman Frying Eggs,
I saw the shadow of her knife curve in her bowl
and the third egg that I will one day fry for you,
ready in her hand, and just today I notice that she's blind.

I'll intimate the prospect of a small but steaming pie
on your return from some exploit on the field —
Then, like two reptiles dressed as ordinary modern folk,
we'll grind down the nutmeg of speculative thought
and with our double entendres, split the air.

And if I should outlive you, would I, in the full
saturation of my grief, for ever breathe verses at your photo?
Or in the tradition of my race, rip my libidinous négligé to shreds
and stock the fridge with all your favourite snacks?
And will I, when I take my final breath,
remember when you asked me to uncross my legs?

The Study of Disease

He knew her immediately for whom she was;
and she, though aghast at his raincoat,
and the almost sacerdotal manner
of his greeting,
led him up Copenhagen Street
in blazing sunlight,
and spoke of a recent dream she'd had
of pale blue missiles arcing in the sky,
while her heart thudded like
a boot against her ribs.

In a bar they exchanged jokes, one each.
He talked about his work, the study of disease;
that pleased her and she felt a shadow at last
get up and leave her to her own devices.

The snarling badger in the taxidermist's window,
the women at the bus stop with their shopping
and the bus itself, all seemed suddenly benign.

She sat on his hand throughout the journey;
the conductress did not come to take their fares —
something he remarked on later when
he spread her out in several different ways.
In the lull they talked, drank wine, and ate quails' eggs —
he watched her crack hers on the wall above the bed.