Katy Macleod
Writings:
What is writing?
Poetry
Short stories
Poetry |
| Titles: The wheelchair Sex in a Vauxhall Estate Where were we then? The map badge: lost at Queen St. station Death - in fourteen words Geraniums Handbag |
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| The
wheelchair Pulling the wheelchair out of the boot Was painful, distasteful even. It was too big, too awkward For the boot of my small car. I did get it out though, Forced the seat down Clanked the metal foot rests Into place Hurried to her side of the car To heave her out into the morning We did not notice. I pushed that chair as if It were a light doll’s pram Up the hospital ramp Along and against the blank resistance Of each disinfected corridor – Through three swing doors Which banged at my heels Neatly clipping our flight To his room, his last bedside. It was she who sat beside him, Her will pinned me To the bottom of the bed. But it was me who caught My father’s quick glance Into the garden, Where Red Admirals Danced above the Budleia, Held him, As if he were theirs. |
| Sex
in a Vauxhall Estate Sorrow came to her in a long moan, Blacking out her sense of it, Stilling her lust, like a moth in a lampshade Heat shocked into exhaustion. She lost the slow pace of it Right near the gear stick of his Vauxhall Estate. The end was fearful as if she had been tongued To death, loved too ridiculously hard, and found wanting. What she feared most was his mounting resentment, The long reproach, her own ridiculousness. Why had she not lost herself as Derrick had? She lay still, slumped on his anorak, hoping The bright red Vauxhall would take her home soon. |
| Where
were we then? Where were we then, when perched on her chair, Home from school, I told of my day? Where were we then and what was the room? Was it the one with the large French windows, The garden surprised by its borders, The jasmine prolific and overpowering? Was it too soon to hear of your memories, Not of that place but others well past, Was it that place where I could have drawn near to you, Was it that place, or, nowhere at all? |
| The
map badge: lost at Queen St. station I was safe until Queen St station deep in his left hand pocket next to his chewing gum, just enough freedom to lie in a Sainsbury’s soft peach tissue, family size, from the store at the end of the Pinhoe road. He forgot me at the junction where Queen Street meets St David’s, pulled out the tissue with me in its folds. I tried to land colour up, offered Queensbury Plaza No 7 and St Ely Ave E-F so boldly, I thought he could not miss me but he was already inside that station buying his ticket to Exmouth for the day. |
| Death
– in fourteen words Death came to her in ecstatic fervour Though she was one of these women Who said fuck But had never truly sucked a cock Or held a buttock slap Or smelled of lingering cunnillingus And truly felt the sense of it. Sadly her breath was interrupted Just as she thought A new poem had come. Oh, the pressure of death, The terrible act of it. Do you know it entirely killed off her skin, Shut down each and every organ, Systematically, until she was dead, Emphatically.
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| Geraniums It is a hoary January whose clasp Sets at odds the skittering blue tits And the stiffened Geraniums In their pots, No bright red petals, no signals Of Summer, This is the month when Nothing blooms, Except anxiety So sharp, its light Could yield up a whole field Of Geraniums, marking out Our garden as if for flight. |
| Handbag Lining frayed quite precisely, black, like a draft extractor Inside, parking tickets, eg Lime Kiln Long Stay, B/Salt. Was that salt marshes, vast and white, or Budleigh Salterton, pebble beach and river estuary, wetland for seabirds? This ticket brings on counting 080506 Vat No 142 2189 90 Were there three Egrets and five Widgeon and eighty two Gulls, At the estuary that day, or did I make it up? The note from Nigel, meet at 11.00am, ‘Titian, Nymph and Shepherd’, title of a recommended book, This last in my handwriting but like the endless loose change Spilled from the bottom of the bag, Useless in the adding up of things. |
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CV Publications  |
