Issue 4: November 2003
David L Briggs | Carrie Etter | Roddy Lumsden | Liane Strauss | Frances Williams
FRANCES WILLIAMS
The Snow Collector
(after Wilson 'Snowflake' Bently, the first man to photograph a snow crystal)
Hexagonal vexations —
Bursting arms of thorny beauty —
Their detailed story
Blown at odds
Within the miraculous
Collections of vast
Piled-up indifference.
But he looked first:
I can't remember when
I didn't love the snow
More than anything
Except my mother.
Winter saw his range
Of focus dotted
In the intricate
Micrographic locus
Of true originality.
Each one was its
Own master and
Held a single clue.
There really wasn't much that he
Could add to that, except pursue
His line of blind obsession:
In forty seven years of study
He collected and observed
Five thousand, three hundred
And eighty one variations
On the theme of snow.
Where the snowflake blew
He also could be found, stooping
Down to pick up off the ground
Handfuls of treasure. Some
Came to rest upon
The shelving of his Trilby hat,
Lacing his attention with little ironies —
Additions to his person
That he could not see,
Nor stop to measure,
Meltings in the realm of pure
Snowflake pleasure.
Butterfly Mine
Quite by chance, and long before
He was widely-known in his own right,
Andy Warhol met Greta Garbo.
In honour of her beauty and her fame
He rushed to give her something
In his name — a drawing of a butterfly.
She took one look at him,
His odd, pale, pitted face,
Screwed up the paper
And threw it to the floor.
But he bent down,
And very carefully
Unfolded the ball.
He took it home that night
And had his mother write, in a careful
Childish script: 'Crumpled
Butterfly, By Greta Garbo.'
The butterfly was rescued
From the kick of busy feet,
Its urgency unravelling down
A New York street.
As for his mother, Julia, she loved
The brand new tape machine
Her son had given as a gift —
Would sing into the microphone
At night, old Czech folk songs.
She'd play them back,
And sing along
Her harmonies of one,
Lay down on shelves of rhyme
The past and present tense.
Along a hinge of lonely joy,
She'd sing and make
Insinuations of eternity —
Songs that would alight, lopsided
In their flight — as a butterfly.
Night of the Notorious
A bowl of Twiglets lay
In the centre of the table,
The charred remains
Of little no-bodies. I rose up
From them, to occupy myself,
A little tipsy, but complete,
Licks of salty Marmite still
Clinging to my elbows.
At the bar, the rock chick's eyes
Hung large and wide as moons.
Caroline Aherne walked in
And shouted out, "Courtney, Luv!"
But Courtney didn't get the joke,
So she offered me a chip,
A twinkle in her burning eye.
Sotto vocce, the waiter
Told me he was off to be
A rocket scientist. Six years
Of waiting on these tables
Was enough. I tried to joke about
The firmament within my glass
Where little stars did burst,
But he was too intent on
Pouring steady. After that
We got drunk on the stories
By which we knew one another,
Smoky as kippers.
'Our Trace' turned out to be
The artist Tracy Emin
In two-piece suit, suddenly
Ethereal. She sucked her ciggy
Casting shifty sober eyes
Over the whole clutch of us.
She offered me a line,
Unfolding the wrap not
Four but twenty times.
It was a page from Lorca and the
Line read: "The wounds were
Burning like suns."
All the taxi driver talked about
On the long ride home
Was the Koran. One truth?
I asked, with liqueur on my breath.
Yes, one truth, he said, spinning
The clapped out vehicle
Through damp deserted streets.
Helter Skelter
Atlantic Road,
Average Main Course £12
I eat chunks of venison
And offer no recrimination
The softest bed of watercress
Slipping at my lips. Outside,
Bananas turn soft and black
Curled in cardboard boxes,
While a train with little lamps
Lit prettily at every window
Roars to Paris — as though
Love itself were in a rush
And not the waiter who
Presses us to say whether
We need anything else?
From The Red Rubber Ball of Happiness (Seren, 2003)
Also available from Amazon.co.uk:
Wild Blue (Seren, 2000).
Flotsam (Seren, 1992).