The Poet, page 15
MARGARET BROWNING
You drop me.
Move to the desk, pick up the telephone
and make a call,
summoning someone, saying,
‘Yes, please, if you have a minute,
can you come?
I’d appreciate it.’
Who are you calling?
The proctor?
The police?
But it’s Margaret Browning
who stands in the doorway.
Her shoes are purple,
her tights bright pink.
I look up at her
from the floor,
then stand up,
straighten out the ache and twist
of my face.
‘Tom? Emma?
How can I help?’
You gesture that I should speak
and sit back in your chair,
arms folded, legs crossed, your face a study of
bemusement.
And I stutter my way towards
Margaret, my explanations so pitiful
that she stops me when I’m not even halfway done
telling the story of your
subterfuge –
I lean against the desk,
legs trembling too much
to hold me up
the room is quivering, crumbling, books
falling;
an avalanche of grammar –
complex sentences wallop and whack,
and I am buried under a rush of full stops.
Slashed into pieces by subordinate clauses.
Stifled by epilogues.
I cover my ears,
my face,
my head.
Want to shrink,
maggot small, and crawl
away from her questions which come unabated.
Her forehead creases.
‘I’m sorry, Emma, I’m not sure I understand.
What’s happened?
Is it your work?
Can’t you get someone from I.T. to take a look?
I’m not sure what it is that you want?’
Margaret frowns, looks at Tom,
not trying to disguise her disbelief:
it sounds like the dog-ate-my-homework kind of crap –
I know she gets all sorts from undergrads
and she’ll think this is more of the same,
that I’m stalling,
finding reasons not to come through.
She towers above me
as I try to explain –
‘Sorry, I don’t think I’m being clear.
Not lost, Margaret.’ I lean up,
supplicating, begging, whispering.
I stand, speak close to her ear.
‘Stolen.’
‘What? How can someone have stolen your ideas?
I’m sorry, Emma, I’m not sure I follow.
Are you saying that the work you’ve undertaken
for the past four years
has now just vanished?’
She snaps her fingers
like a magician miming disappearance.
‘Yes.’
(It’s Tom.
He’s taken it all.)
The accusation
is in my eyes
my fists
my nails
that crave to score you open
paint your bleeding entrails
all over this room.
‘Tom?’
She looks back at you.
Unspoken words pass,
the sizzle of synapses
the firing of thoughts.
You clear your throat, get up and
crouch down beside me,
make a show of
trying to help me to my feet.
‘Emma’s had a hard few months,
what with the miscarriage, you know, and whatnot.
If you could reassure her,
Margaret, that all will be well,
that she will find her way back to herself,
it might help us to
put together some sort of plan.’
The subtext is of course:
how dare I have the temerity to presume
that I could ever be as good as you.
Better if I accept your version of me:
weak, vulnerable,
quite possibly
in need of a lunatic’s cell.
It is harder than I’d imagined
to get Margaret to understand,
and I’m shouting and wrestling myself out of your arms
away from your hands
that are so big
one could span my neck
or crush my skull.
I stand up straight and face Margaret
dead on.
‘He stole my work,
my chapters,
everything I’ve done.’
But it’s a muddle,
like a paintbrush
dragged from one colour to the next
I blur the edges
mess up the page
tear the paper
and my hair.
‘Emma,’ she tells me,
‘you’re not making sense.’
Believing me relies on believing that you
are a charlatan
a mountebank
a cheat
and I’m not sure she’s there yet.
‘I’m sorry, Margaret—’
I try to breathe,
regret calling you a cunt
and making her think I’ve lost
more than my work.
I should have shown up
wearing something smart and a smile,
spoken in smooth measured tones,
not arrived after a night screwing another bloke
clothes creased
face smudged
with lack of sleep
stink of sex still on my breath
and more words for bastard than you can count.
I should have made an appointment,
written it all out – nice and neat.
We should have sat around a table,
I could have made my case,
left her in no doubt
that I was perfectly sane.
But as it is, no one believes me.
I gather my bag,
straighten my clothes,
my face,
and button my coat
to catch my flailing heart inside.
I leave them,
the air
still heaving
with the panic of birds trapped
in a windowless space
hurling themselves against walls.
LOST
Walking helps,
then running fast,
the thud of the street under my feet –
its solidity
reminds me that there are facts
and I need to get mine straight.
Throwing wild accusations –
as you would call them,
as you did call them –
will get me nowhere.
Games of hide-and-seek as a child when
I lay under a bed, covered in dust,
giggling,
giving myself away,
or cheating in tests –
French vocab written under a sleeve
and the teacher almost laughing
at my pathetic attempt to hide:
he could see
right through me.
Naive fool
to think that in this place,
this ancient town
of towers and walls,
my voice might fall
on listening ears.
I stop and stare at stone,
rest my forehead on the cold,
shut my eyes and breathe in the brick.
I’d bite it if my teeth wouldn’t smash,
would gnaw my way
into the marrow of these buildings,
ingesting their power.
No one stops.
No one sees
me standing there
haunted by my poet’s mad Ken
with his eyes like wounds –
red stars, Charlotte called them –
how as he walked he held his hands before him
braced against the threat of bars.
Have I stepped inside her poem?
My own face feels raw
my eyes bleed shame
as if I have been flayed
nerves pulped
meat hooked.
Is that what you want?
I glance over my shoulder
afraid of who might have slipped into my shadow,
who it is that might be tracking me,
my phone chirrups –
Ari.
I find my way to town and the bustle of shops,
cafes, light and life.
A strange normality
I cannot adjust myself to fit.
We drink tea
and my legs shake.
I fidget in my seat,
spilling sugar and salt,
mixing them on the table top
drawing lines
fences
locked boxes
curbs and bolts and bars
then sitting on my hands to stop
the itch of anxiety,
the compulsion to worry
that this is it –
I’m
(un)done.
‘Why don’t you tell me everything.’
Ari watches me,
hand twitching as if he’d like to reach and still
my frantic fingers.
‘It might help.’
And then he waits for a decent response.
I suppose I should be grateful
that’s he’s reaching out.
When I shrug he presses on,
‘What precisely has the prof done?
It can’t be that bad, surely –
I mean, look at us, last night.
It can’t have been much worse than that.
Has he actually been having a full-on affair?
Is that why you’re so upset?’
I stare him down,
ask what he knows.
Maybe there’s another woman as well,
and Ari’s just a lad keeping lads’ secrets –
some private members’ club.
He freezes at the accusation, draws back,
afraid of muddying his lovely life with my mess.
And if my tone suggested that I think he’s complicit,
well, he wouldn’t believe me if I told him the facts,
so in that sense
he is.
I can already hear him defend you
tell me that his prof is no plagiarist –
certainly no thief.
Oh, yes, Ariel would accuse me of
imagining ridiculous things.
He holds up his hands.
‘Look, don’t ask me,
it’s not as if we’re mates,
he’s my supervisor, and I rate him
and as far as I know he’s a bloody good bloke,
but I’m worried. Look, Emma, are you OK?
You don’t look so great.’
‘God, yes, fine – all right,
forget it, please, I don’t want to talk about it,
it’s a waste of time.’
‘Course.
Look, if it’s that bad
why don’t you stay with me for a while,
you can share my room, decide what’s next.’
He covers my hand at last
and I don’t move,
don’t reciprocate the affection,
don’t feel anything right this second.
Numb,
as if I am matchstalk-made:
washed-out watercolour, ivory and black,
in a place I thought I’d left behind,
shunted right back
to where I began.
My lips
split on the thought
and I’m spitting tea,
choking on my inability to tell him
what it means to have failed.
‘Look, Ari,’ I begin,
‘I mean, you’re lovely and everything
but I can’t move in with you –
not like that –
I’m going to have to leave,
maybe go back home.’
I can’t. I won’t.
I know this is a lie
to get me out of
becoming that girl again,
reliant on some man
who doesn’t understand.
‘And where’s that?’
‘Far away from here.
This place.
Where everyone is so full of bull –
you know it means nothing, Ari, right?
Whether you’re good at it or not,
whether you get the grade,
write a book,
in the real world no one actually cares.
This place, it’s monstrous,
it gobbles you up.’
I’m rambling
but I know there’s a truth in this.
I sit there
banging my chest with my fist
as nonsense ricochets from wall to wall;
childish, I complain
about injustice
and say,
It’s not fair, over and over again.
But my voice must be too loud
because I hear it coming back to me:
shrill echo,
shrieking complaints,
making accusations of foul play.
Ari backs away,
pays the bill,
steers me
outside
and I bend over
hands on my knees.
‘Sorry,’ I tell him, panting words,
‘I’ll be fine.
Need some time
to decide
what I’m going to do.
Please, Ari, go –
don’t worry
best if you just leave me alone.’
He walks away
and I pull what is left of myself together
again.
I blame you, Tom,
for this.
If you come for me again,
try to unpick me
and make me bleed,
lie that you never lied to me,
smile serenely
as you button my lips
and tie me up in paradox
I don’t know what I’ll do.
PERPETUAL MOTION
If I shut my eyes I can see it coming:
Here are the walls.
And here
you are racing towards me.
What if it’s me who falls?
What if you catch me
and you’re wearing your armour
and you put your lips to my palm.
What if I drop back into your arms
and open my veins?
The sun comes out
and I sit on the stone steps beside the Sheldonian
listening to an orchestra tuning up,
the drum of the Radcliffe Camera beating behind me,
watching the world and waiting,
thinking about burning things down.
Flames catch in my throat
as I begin to suffocate
on the idea of destroying the place.
I wrote it in my diary,
aged just fifteen:
go to Oxford,
be something,
be better
than me.
And now here I am
sitting in a winter sun
that doesn’t touch me, rays out of reach,
because I was never bright enough to see
the way it worked.
I thought it ended when I’d only just begun.
One book of poems,
and the man I thought
would make me
something.
That was my mistake right there,
the oldest one
there is.
I wanted to sit in a book-lined room
wombed in words.
I didn’t see the tomb that waited
for the woman
who underrated herself.
GO, LEAVE
I sit in the kitchen
in my coat,
bag at my feet,
waiting.
On the table is the memory stick
I stole.
I watch it
and realize how pitiful
to think
I had you
with that –
what proof?
You are late
and it’s dark,
very, very dark,
and I am very, very still,
sitting here
aching.
You turn on the light
and startle
when you see me.
But you don’t speak.
You go about your business
as if I am not here,
that game we play –
childish:
who will speak first
prove they still care,
acknowledge that there was once
love?
But now it’s
dying here in front of us.
At least a word would mean
you want
to pick it up
and resuscitate our corpse.
You pour yourself a glass of water,
leave the room
and close your study door.
MARYANNE
I call her from the bar
where I’m crouched
over my glass.
I took the money for my drink from your drawer
where you leave coppers, coins
and the detritus of your life.
On the phone she sounds so far away
and too much has happened for me to explain –
‘Emma, what’s wrong?’
