by Gaia Holmes
The
Banshees
He heard the Banshees
singing
weeks before she died.
Each night their cold
blue keening
stained his dreams, or in
the day time
one of their discordant
notes
would find him, get
lodged in his body
like a trapped wasp,
somewhere
between his heart and his
brain.
I tried to diffuse their
mournful racket,
trained myself to coo
like a wood pigeon,
breathe, like yeast
expanding in proving dough,
whisper, like the soft
crackle of crocus shoots
pushing through the crust
of a bulb.
I asked the wind to sing
something gentle,
told the moon to hum as
it nosed its way
through the dark, worked
hard to raise
the volume of our bodies
as we loved:
our hearts thumping, our
blood roaring,
our bones colliding.
But on that day I had no
song strong enough
to hold them back. They
came wailing,
whey-faced, raw-eyed,
stood at the end of the bed
and sung him the long,
demented opera
of her death.
Clapshot
My
mother called it 'Cowboy's saddle';
that
pungent mulch of carrot and swede.
She
christened it at a time
when we
were spaghetti Western bandits
galloping
around the garden
on our
sweeping brush steeds.
It's
what the cowboys eat, she said.
It's all
the cowboys eat. That and sprouts.
Now at
this twisted reunion,
I'm a
child being fed by my father
who
still scolds me for using too much salt,
who
still keeps his love locked in his fists,
whose
eyes have become colder and bluer,
whittled
by the sharp Alaskan breeze.
Mum used
to call this 'Cowboy's Saddle'
I say as
I fork up a mound of orange mash.
CLAPSHOT,
he says, Up here
we call it 'Clapshot.'
From Dr James Graham's
Celestial Bed (Comma Press, 2006)
Desires
We keep our desires
in small cast-iron boxes
with impenetrable locks,
carry them with us
wherever we go
and they weigh us down,
make our hearts feel
like toothache.
Sometimes sounds creep
through the metal:
bird song, slow ferns
uncurling,
rain on greenhouse glass.
Sometimes
when we're not
concentrating
scents slip out
of the miniscule cracks:
crushed orange peel,
fevers and hot summer
skin.
Sometimes our desires
are beyond our control,
they make whirlwinds
in their prisons,
rock their boxes,
scream for honey
and fingertips.
We try to ignore them,
blush and fidget,
smother them with our
coats
and talk about maths.
Sometimes we're cruel,
we fill the bath
and hold them under water
until they stop babbling,
deprive them of our
dreams.
From Dr James Graham's
Celestial Bed (Comma Press, 2006)
Epiphany
And it comes to me
as we drive through moors
clotted with burnt, black
heather,
where the air smells of
sulphur and honey.
Inland, away from you
the sky is a finger
painting:
stale streaks of dark
clouds daubed
above the slated roof
tops.
You have to learn to
register these things:
the sweet and the sour
moments of life,
each dead pheasant you
pass
fluttering like a
ballgown
in the motorway breeze,
each blurred wasp you see
pulped against the
windscreen:
the frail mortality of
colour.
Remember-this is the way
you breathe,
like a symphony of echo
trapped inside a shell.
On days like this
there are certain things
that you recall:
the clinging breeze
loaded with salt,
dead fish rotting on the
tide line,
the way that the edges of
the land
blurred and spread
and sunk into the sea
Remember that day when we
woke
because the sun beams
nudged us
out of our sticky nest of
sloth.
Our ambition became
sobriety.
We binned empty wine
bottles
and sour milk,
scoured lust off the
dishes,
sat out in the garden,
and waited for our hearts
to dry.
Night
The bedroom window is
open.
The coldness of the
coming storm
masks the thick scent
of last night's love.
The moon is low
and I am thin as tracing
paper,
nothing left but my
outline.
My head is full of
voodoo,
my frail breath
like brittle oranges ,
and you lie on the bed
in your crucifixion pose.
My task is to keep you
alive
with the voltage
of my yew-tipped fingers,
to make you cry like a
new born.
The dome of the mosque
glints at me across the
rooftops
like a fat and mystic
eye.
Outside, children crazy
on the electric
dance in a trance,
heels thumping, hair
streaming,
plastic sandals flapping
on warm tarmac.
Tonight the world is full
of sprites.
From Dr James Graham's
Celestial Bed (Comma Press, 2006)
Someone
should tell her mother she's taking drugs
I'm not a nosy neighbour,
a curtain twitcher
but there are things you
just can't help noticing.
She's one of them. You know the
kind,
all joss sticks, earth
mothers and mandalas,
all mung beans, patchouli
and window-box herbs.
Each day there's a
constant procession
of men and women, poets
and pimps
knocking on her door.
She has lots of lovers.
One morning I saw a whole
army leaving her house
glowing and glistening
with post-coital sweat.
I'm not narrow minded.
I know that she's
probably a nice young lady.
I think she's just mixing
with the wrong crowd.
I've seen her
dancing with the devil
through a
crack in her curtains.
There they
were, in her living room- naked.
Her- white as
milk-top cream,
him-red as a
pillar box twisting and writhing,
their fingers
turning into snakes.
Each month when the moon
is full
her walls breathe. The
bricks inhale and exhale.
The shrubs in her garden
mumble maledictions.
Thick red light emanates
from her letter box,
bleeds onto the street
killing dandelions, scabbing in cracks.
Up in her attic she
conducts a choir of split-tongued harpies.
They sing the Psalms
backwards,
set car alarms screaming
and town dogs barking.
She snorts cocaine,
sleeps in a coffin,
eats dead kittens drowned
in gin.
She keeps wolves in the
cellar
and mermaids in the bath
tub,
washes with absinthe and
brimstone soap.
I'm not the type to make
judgments.
I'm a liberal thinker.
I just worry about her
welfare.
I think someone should
tell her mother
that she's taking drugs.
It's girls like her
that give this street a
bad name.
When he comes
So this is it.
This is the night.
Downstairs the sofa
doesn't know me anymore,
my occasional china
is cracking with boredom,
the front door
is guarded by foxgloves
and throttled
with toad-flax
and this is it.
This is me;
mad woman in the attic
sifting the air for
gold-dust,
a circle of crushed moths
patterning the carpet
around my feet,
cold coffee at my elbow,
logic in a hip-flask
and I'm drinking wine
that tastes of hay
and Salamanca in July
and we're all waiting
for the storm, an answer,
a fag-burn in the sky,
words etched into
the slick streets,
the soft porn
of rain
on the skylight window.
We're all waiting
for our dead dogs
to rattle up the stairs
We're all waiting
for our grandmother's
to polish our eyes
with spit
on the corner
of a vest.
We're all waiting
for someone to say our
name
with meaning.
We're all waiting,
ears angled cat-like,
waiting,
for a car to pull up,
waiting,
for inspiration
to open the door
and enter
smelling of life,
of blood,
of little deaths,
of unspeakable notions
and say I'm yours.
Take me now.
Charm
He could charm the poison out of fox gloves
and used his skills to quicken my heart.
I wondered what he fed on: frayed liturgies
and the secret dreams of women,
toxic spores translated into messages
of lust, slivers of the dank March sky
rolled up like pickled herring.
I never knew. He always skimmed me,
left me hooked on some potent pollen,
some sacrificial line,
some cold gap between sentiments.
His fingers were like cathedrals,
too big to untie my delicate knots
yet he knew me inside out like he knew
the names of flowers and bats and clouds,
like he knew how to throw daggers
without skewering the soul.
He could sniff out creeping wolf-men
and crack their backbones with a lazy wink,
worked my fingers to his throat
like a snake charmer,
made me slide and arch with his singing breath.
After we'd loved and I was doped up on glow
he laid wet silver on my
eyelids
believing it would bring him luck.
Return to Gaia Holmes
Interview
Return to Main Menu