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Having finally dined with the aerialist,
I found him just a college gymnast,
fresh pressed East Coast boy dismissed
from frosty Dartmouth February last,
distinguished just by his wish to kiss
the topmost stripe of the circus tent, sniff
sugar mixed with sawdust, trodden glass, and seek
the chalky hand of the Only Candelabra Girl.
Let me lift my glass and drink to the quirk
that lets him fly, slick in tights and lycra
nightly through the Gods. I shall crick my neck
to see him spin his new wife high above me,
her roped mouth, her spotlit nose, and
candles in her fingers, candles in her toes.
From Magma No. 9, Spring 1997
A shotgun in her parlour, Amazon says Enter.
A barefoot wedding. She gestures like treacle,
a guttering of purple in a dugout canoe on the
dream banks of the living room carpet. A diva, she
demands more body. Her want is citrus scented.
She waits in silence, a pulsating black
widow's abdomen. A calling. When you finally
wade into the first-sex smell of nectarines, she
tells you a night-time scare story : of alien
autopsy, the power of the drum, and the psychic
potential of humankind. Designed to send your
blood into the web. "Relinquish" she mouths into
the spaces between your outstretched fingers. Give
way to the sinking vibration of a temple bell. Let
her drop you, head first into the green with
nothing more to cling to than the ozone, ivy and
spider within.
After dark I call you up,
just to hear the weather report,
that the nights are drawing in now,
and how much you paid
for your latest pair of trousers.
You’ll tell me the one about
PLUTO, the giant pipeline rolling out
under the Channel on a steel drum,
how it kept the tanks fed
for our boys on the continent,
how the ice cream hut along the bay
was really a pump in disguise,
like those Ruperts that kept the Führer
guessing. And the Kamikaze who’d blaze
unswerving to the end, the enemy
you couldn’t help but admire. And I’ll
sing you American Pie again,
like that last night in the hospital,
however many times you try to die.
