Poetry

Fall 2008

 

 

Jane Ormerod

Alibi

The post arrived early
I opened the newsletter, read the list of essentials:
clot cream for your eyes
fluorescent sunglasses, round pegs for the natives
I noted the lip plump, highlighter
the bells and trimmings for your Pekinese dog, red clover tea
and I cycled away
singing

Wooden alley, damask road
It's all the same to me

Oh, we jaunt and we joint and we janitor
each and every single word and gesture
and it makes not an ounce scrapbook of difference
Let me tell you
the bed is no longer used
We are just four-legged monkeys
screwing, panting, our fur tattered on the floor
and our babies are the death clues
of how it's life never-ending

There's no event
(our remaining skin)
There is no end

Sulphur, eden
Nothing pristine
Nothing to barter

Faceless but dutiful monkeys
Too many limbs
to know how to use
We are born dead and slowly freeze to life

Wooden alley, damask road
It's all the same to m

 

The Children versus Adults

Whatever was on my back was not a monkey
Whatever you said was wall to bayside
Rosy bra straps
A CD left inside the rental car

Shrinking, shrinking
Shrinking like Alaska
Glass doggies on the pier

The boy-in-waiting waiting
The waiter beside himself
The whatever's the mat…
The never the monkey
The monkey who never arrives
The monkey who never apologizes

Shrinking, shrinking
Shrinking like Alaska
A wolfhound attached to a jogger
I heard it so so

One grandmother for my thoughts

I am the largest of the Victorians
Shoes this high
I walk like a lobby
Walk like a hobby
Naked or clothed
Ceiling of smoke and the sodden carpet
A flash then the bang then the wallop then the blimey

The greatest of Victorians
When the night was a fella
And the sun more blank than blanket
Today is fever three times over
And large paintings may come from small drawings

Yellow sin floor
Flood of evening
Nasturtiums fire-flicker

A telephone (one gold and onyx monstrosity)
A bench built from train sleepers
Worn leather couch with candy-twist feet
The sound of a radio talkshow filtered
Through the room below
The fold of bedspread exposing the drum tight sheet
The twenty percent lycra in his tee-shirt
The tips in the crease
The just for the hell of it
The just for the ring of it
The never a monkey
The never a monkey

Shrinking like Alaska
Spatchcocked inside the third floor room
Rudimentary as bird song
North and south bared
Birdlimed in the light

This girl of maybe
These girl and boy of Alaskan maybe
Maybe

 

The Terminus

tomorrow I have planned to fall
to fall like cattle    lithium    to fall like sound    like plaid    boldness
success the abattoir

tough love kills nightly    fucking blondes is no safer than fucking brunettes
need a ghost?    then teach my grandmother how to suckle eggs

I am sick of kneeling    sick of swarming    sick of feeling    sick of learning

tomorrow I have planned to fall
to fall like patent leather    belfries    flash fires
wish bowls and bones and well

to fall like failure    fairground darkness
this is me    this loss    should it matter?
why I lust the morgue

to fall on deaf ears you must be standing    to desire you need to lack
to fail?    you tell me
you tell me about    floods    voices    bullrazing dozers    confectionary
how to hammer objects into hardened soil

I am sick of leaning    sick of crawling    sick of reeling    sick of calling

tomorrow I have planned to fall
to fall like geese at Christmas    bedroom showgirls
sewage    light truth    conversation
to fall like fingers    funtime    commemorative doubt

to fall a plan    an ending    an otherwise name
this is what I'm made of    this is what I try to leave

tomorrow I have planned to fall
to fall like cattle
literature
success

 

 

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