Issue 11: November 2005

Lara Frankena | Sandra Greaves | Jen Hadfield | David Hale | Paul Perry | Philip Wilson

JEN HADFIELD

Hey Hey Mr Blue

Skerryman's in that blue shirt, makes everything like Indian summer, unbelievable it'll ever end.
What's beautiful? The hack-uddered cattle, sun like gold-top on their bulging flanks. My arms,
the swaggering right sunburnt, a python on the wound-down window. Every blazing day is like the
old songs and tonic water, the grasses tipsy, starlings like crochet rests on the telegraph's stave.
Imagine Skerryman, in his nostalgia shirt. Hey HEY Mr Blue. I beat time in the cidery grasses.

And Skerryman goes
                                                                               right-o, time I was getting on

and moves your hand, and zips his fly, and antlered a silent Harrier zips the blue sky, trailing a
streamer of ROAR.

 

Unfledging

Hold the bird in the left hand, and commence to pull off the feathers from under the wing. Having plucked one
side, take the other wing and proceed in the same manner, until all the feathers are removed.
                                                                                       Mrs Beeton's Household Management.

I raise Paisley wounds,
spill yellow pollen of fat.
This is reversing time, like a vandal

who scored shellac blooms
from a soundbox, tightens to snapping
the strings of a lute.

As if I scraped a poem's lard
from vellum. As brattish
as kicking a cat.

In pale skin are magnolia buds:
the muscles that worked wings,
but I've undone the wings,

gripping each pinion
as if to slide home the marriage ring
and never dream of flying again;

I've plucked the eyed, seed feathers,
the chicky down, the fine human hair
like first casing of mushroom spawn,

the long quills that striped across
the evening sun,
trembling in the rainstorm's target.

 

Paternoster

                  for A.B.J

Paternoster. Paternoster.
Hallowed be dy mane.

D'kingdom come.
D'draftwork be done

though heart stiffen
in the harness.

Still plough the day
an give out daily bray.

Then sleep fasten harness with bear-bells
and trot on bravely into sleep

where the black an bay
the sorrel an the grey

an foals an bearded wheat
are waiting.

It is on earth as it is in heaven.
Drought, wildfire; skinny

wild asparagus,
yellow flowers on the flowering cactus.

Give our daily wheat, wet
whiskers in the tin bucket.

Knead my heart, hardened daily.
Ease the imprint in my heart.

Gies our oats at bedtime
an in the night half sleeping.

Give meadows, hayrolls,
whiskery knappin.*

Paternoster. Paternoster.
Hallowed be dy hot mash.

*knappin - two ponies cleaning each other's hair with their mouths.

 

Five Thirty Sixish

Day in day out this land is chafed by light
'til five thirty sixish,
it's bald as old sandpaper, showing its hide.

So make the most of loneliness. Hang
your head to one side like a sainted donkey,
tears crystallised on dense sweetheart lashes,

hang your head like a kid in a tree-fort
hearing her weird name called and called
it might be towhee, towhee, across the evening,

hang your head and squinting, sing,
old english ballads about bewildering
betrayals, murder and burgundy,

down in the willow garden.

 

Jen Hadfield was born in Cheshire in 1978. She won an Eric Gregory Award in 2003. She has recently
spent a year in Canada. 'Hey Hey Mr Blue' and 'Unfledging' are from her debut collection Almanacs.

Available from Amazon.co.uk: Almanacs (Bloodaxe, 2005).

Bloodaxe