Issue 16: May 2010

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

 

AMY KEY

Yes, She Seemed Demure

with her shiny harp-string hair,
the way her throat buttoned-up to mute. But I had seen
her eyes flow over like a vase beneath a left-on tap
and how around her, the men’s patter stumbled
like a high-heeled walk across cobbles. No ordinary
girl. I so keenly wanted to know her, but she was unwearable
to me, with my overt everythings. One night I went home
to unfloozy myself, combed through my dresses
for shimmy and cling. Out went the showy. I shied my tongue
away from unbecoming talk, eg ‘shrug’ and ‘toothy’; studied
my face into blank. Taking up smoking, I swiftly acquired aloneness,
and never took a lover. I remember once she winked,
as I glowered in a corner. We saw her less and less that year.

Valentine

Instead of I love you here’s you: all cordial, necktie, vinyl
and cola cubes – the unsubtle quirks that make my heart wheel.
I’m the champagne in the saucer, you’re the bubbles spun
by soap. No legacy of teacups can hold what I feel.

With you, morning hatches silly, buttery and plump;
lean to me, sing belly, curve, loosen. My platelets coo.
How the flex of your voice lolls in this devout climate
of sheets! Here’s the nineteenth kiss in the queue.

Remember me to him

I had a thing for biting, but never broke the skin.
I burnt the roof of my mouth with mad talk
about him, to him, how he mustn’t fall
for that girl who looked like she might lose
her looks too young. About thoughts of his wrists
which had kept me awake for nights; I ran my fingers
through his sand dune hair, in incremental obsession.
No one had ever wanted him quite so explicitly.

We first made love in the high discomfort
of summer, did not talk of his too little past
flush with the minute I love yous
of first love, or mine. After, in the jilted quiet
I hid the blink of his stereo’s twitchy LEDs in his blank
boy’s room while he slept. I kissed each pale tone
of his skin. At his neck I mouthed Love and spelt it
on his back with my teeth. I mouthed Love whenever
our eyes couldn’t meet. I danced, and coerced his ticklish
laugh with each spin of my skirts gurgling
look I’m underwater, I’m a jellyfish, all with valentine-pink
LED lights wound about my thighs.

Of course, he madly wanted
to please me, dedicated The BMX Bandits’
‘Top Shop Girl’ to me on his student radio show,
and then there were the tapes he made, each song
imbued with the strength of his feeling.
And I him, though I wouldn’t admit it,
always saying I’m just making you better for the next girl.
To be with him always, I sewed whispers in the lining
of his jackets mainly ‘hush now’ and ‘night-night’
and never sent him text messages. He always wanted sex.

On My Deathbead, I Ask You This

Help me into fresh pyjamas,
lay out a blush-warm eiderdown
on a meadowed lawn, and grant me
a last lie down in the edible air.

Preserve
me that way – on a garden’s feather
bed – my slunk body embroidered
with cobwebs, leaf drift, silver trails. Honour
this last voluptuous reluctance to leave.