Issue 16: May 2010

Judy Brown| Jane Draycott | Wayne Holloway-Smith | Amy Key | John Stammers | Heather Philipson

 

WAYNE HOLLOWAY-SMITH

In Camden or Camberwell …

Mark then, Sophie, the physiognomy of this rosebush,
beneath its blanket beauty (like that of bruised butterflies)
and the way it wears the sky for a blue hat,
thinking that makes it like so many blackbirds.

* Oh-ho
(you may well rub your hands) the ol’ Simulacrum Machine’s
paying out today. The squeak of my very own red boots
makes me feel like a tall version of a boy who listens to Morrissey.

And it’s not unlike someone like you, you know,
this rosebush in its blue hat. Note how it shakes
and feels hurt when all the world withdraws
and the smaller birds who best it sing inside it like an iPod,
grinning teeth hidden behind those lively white-blue knots.

Someone like you, all scarecrow’s cock and uniform,
is somewhere smiling, in Camden or Camberwell – like a coat hanger,
trying on so much of this London, gawping as the rosebush at blackbirds,
about to bite and taste nothing.

Thirty Minutes of Havana for Only Fifteen Cents!

Have you heard the one about Julius?
After a show he climbs inside his dressing gown,
sets his alarm to guffaw in half an hour,
puts his feet up and settles down on the hotel bed.

Chuffing the cigar, the texture heady, a nutty aroma,
he pulls easy, satisfied. Chews over the name Groucho.
Enjoys it, Groucho. Strokes his upper lip fluff,
savours his future. Shoots a look at the clock, fifteen minutes.

The cigar is waning. He tries to relax, closes his eyes
but hears the seconds tick. The brown skin is receding fast.
He's tense. His eyes flick, twenty-one minutes gone.
In another it's dead, a soggy mix of spit and shreds.

As soon as morning cracks he's spilling the butt
on the store counter and the clerk’s face is saying
What? They haggle the difference of eight minutes,
then cut a deal: another cigar.

Back in that flea-bitten room, he winds up the timepiece,
hangs back and smokes, practises a few expressions.
For eighteen minutes, pictures the lights flashing Marx Bros,
then he's holding the quick of it in his hand.

He takes a pen, writes a stiff letter
and three weeks later gets a cheque
from La Preferencia Cigars – fifteen cents.
And this is the kicker: he cashes it, buys another.

Reasons Not to Brick a Squirrel

I have grown thin from the presence of the squirrel
who passes among the raked leaves on the square
of green in my garden, and over the table, prizing
red candles from wine bottles. His paws cling
to the chipped paint of a windowsill; the street
lamp’s glare amplifying his shadow, while a widescreen
fills my room with the salience of a cocktail nation.
He taps the glass on the back door as I sleep and so disturbs
my vested self, the one from the wrong side of Orange County
but about to come good, and with my straight-toothed friends
around me I might win at a computer game or kiss the girl.
When tonight I answer him, he heeds not the brick in my hand.
Instead, his eyes, they say:

But I too dream of California, and I know that you know nothing more than I know, which is nothing except
the nibbling of skin from the grapes of Napa Valley as the day bulges;
of a night spent swinging in a bar with a low-slung ceiling
to the music of Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, a spinning double bass,
a girl’s whale-boned waist agreeing silently with your palm.
But, they say, mostly, mostly I know that we two are the same;
picking what we can from the chicken wing of South London.

The brick in my hand drops only when the cyclical pitch
of police cars ring out a laugh at the both of us.

Wayne Holloway-Smith’s pocketbook, provisionally titled Beloved, in case you've been wondering ... is due to be published by Donut in October 2010.