Category: Poems

Bikini clad dip
into giant moving body of blue
without flinching
yet he flinched
Memories of a science lesson
where you had to draw the digestive system from memory
make a list of pieces then jig-saw them in
to the red nosed man in Operation
so if you unravelled the gut
it would stretch around four houses
and all that time she sat in warm blood
thinking it was a bit of warm wee
and the old school cleaner got her a hammock pad and said it’s your period

Uncle Jonathon strode in
like he was in a movie
Her dainty breaststroke versus his front crawl
head turning to a macho rhythmic gasp
to check if each side of the sea was still there
thinking of the coffee dribble by the kettle
He was thinking of his sums
The end of the tax year
to take his mind off the bikini
Tables, graphs, pi squared, algebraic muddles, leaky pens, computer screens
Pens in Star Trek cups
Pencils with dirty cracked erasers like his eye wrinkles
Formulations, cogitations, lines of logic
Timetables, clients, pound signs.
That coffee dribble
has been there since last week
Then he thought of the chimney that he could fix when he got paid.
Front crawl

She thought more of guts, liver, heart and spleen
Holding hands, the beating heart
Memento mori
Forcing blood as a blanket of soothe
Where was the list of things to jigsaw in?

Taken from Super 8 Magicscape (2021)

Patchwork overcoat of amber
waits for gust
Hark back to the days when
we used to store sunlight

Leaves
sighing
after the laughter of summer
when our green architecture
supported flowery pedestals

We used to store sunlight
from green to brown to black to light, and back, we will return

Juicy to dry willow trails
Crunch
Cracked midribs
Mellow to the core
before
the freeze

What was vert, grün
turns to
schokoladebraun
noir

We will show you the passage of time
Rest in peace, dear chlorophyll
Our russet wreaths lie in
Pembrey Woods, with fellow garlands

We used to store sunlight
Richly veined pipelines
of original solar panels
Memories of snap
Snap
Snap
Snaps of gold
Swallowed

Leaves

Protection and fun
We make hedgehog duvets
Snails’ hover-boards

We used to store sunlight

An abandoned cycle lies flat
Wheel spinning
Waiting

Fat graffiti rests on guitar curves
Thoughts of bored teens
The word web in white

The house where you lived is now an art collective
Ghosts squeezing under your door
Your scullery a gallery
Your en-suite an office

Crimson brick café across the road
Coffee sippers gaze at the spinning wheel,
at the framed prints in the window,
unaware of our pilgrimage euphoria

Light song of metal screech
Lime green tram casts shadows
on the chequered path

Here is your home-town
we knew only from lips, letters, pixels

A leaf pulled from a hedge
on the dashboard it dries
in the air of our ancestors

From Wilkommen Zum Rattenfanger Theater (2019)

In Bielefeld my sister Syl and I stopped to take pictures of the place where we think our mother lived. Magical.

In Greenwood, studded with crab and perry,
out of tempest mind tumbled Caliban.
So say yeomen of sixteenth century,
‘Bring thee where the crabs grow,’ said the madman.
Drinking proverbial acidity,
Gossip’s Bowl was spice sipped by Bidford folk
in restaurants of ancient forestry
acid draughts intoxicate shallow jokes.
But three crabbed months had soured themselves to death.
‘He’ll never have Miranda,’ they concurred.
The Bidford souls muttered under their breath
‘Goddess and a madman?’ with spoon they stirred.
‘Whose apple thou art, gem grown from deep root?’
‘Yours, but I will never bear sweet fruit.’

Copyright © Deborah Edgeley