The Poet, page 18
every day.
I don’t tell you how he bothers me
like a fly rattling a windowpane.
We meet so I can tell him
to leave me alone.
I tell Ariel I’m staying with you.
I try to feel sorry for him
but don’t have it in me to care enough
about his predicament.
I mean, what exactly was it we had –
a one-night stand?
A fledgling friendship?
He has no right even to this sliver of time,
or the effort it takes to expel
these words.
He pours his tea,
slams the pot back on the table,
making it shake.
‘But I thought you were angry –
he cheated, right?
I thought there was something there.
I thought we clicked.’
I sigh. He’s a child.
‘Everyone cheats, Ari,
in one way or another –
I’ve decided to let it go,
God, I’m no saint either.
There was what I did with you, for a start –
I never told Tom about that.’
Ari twitches, runs his hands through his hair –
guilty, maybe, nervous,
and scared of what you might think
of your star pupil’s
dick
in your girlfriend’s mouth
and her cunt on his lips,
and I know that it’s foul,
all this
bad language, but these are the words
you like to use
when you screw me
and I smile because
you don’t know the words I will use to undo you.
I smile at Ari and touch his hand.
‘Look, I’m sorry if you’re upset
but it’s not going to happen again.’
‘So, you used me?’
‘No.
I did like you.’
I suppose that’s true, but it’s hardly the issue
right now,
although maybe it is
the issue; that is,
of his ego
and my audacity
in rejecting whatever he had which he thought
I needed.
‘But – Ari, the thing is,
I’ve got a lot going on.’
He doesn’t finish his tea,
leaves it still steaming
and weak with milk
on the table.
He leaves me,
shrugging into the afternoon.
I am happy that I can write myself free
with a gluttonous vocabulary that
feasts on revenge.
You can’t please everyone all the time –
my mother’s motto, wearily moaned
when my brother and I would fight,
and I’ve never given her credit for
the things she could have taught me.
Ariel can think what he wants,
deal on his own with his
resentment.
I make my way home – the first Tuesday in Lent –
and stop
at the church
find my way inside and sit at the back
staring at Our Lady
cradling her baby,
listening to the priest talk about
patient suffering and
how it will be rewarded.
Sod that.
I’m no Griselda.
I have nothing to prove.
I leave before Communion
and let my rage fly me home.
SURGE
Time begins to pass as it won’t in winter –
spring sun comes on
strong and
I watch the sprouting shoots of green in my garden
and get down to work.
I study hard,
am back on track with my research,
while another woman keeps the house clean
and a delivery man brings the food we need
so I can concentrate on what matters most.
BIRTHDAY
The mirror returns your smile better than I can.
‘Forty-one,’ you say and I ignore the
invitation to offer congratulations and
if you were expecting a present, well,
think on.
Margaret comes for Sunday lunch
with a cluster of other friends
and I cook as you pour drinks.
We paint a picture of domesticity:
there is harmony in the way I measure,
stir, roast and fry, press my tongue into the salt
of secrecy, the spice of silence.
‘Emma’s doing so well,’ you announce to the room;
you share that you’re pleased I’m in therapy
and am working again.
‘She’s dealing with whatever it was that
made her break down so spectacularly
last term.’
Margaret nods and touches my arm:
soft in velvet and smiles,
she is kind but shrewd,
and asks me to show her around.
We go into the garden,
pulling in air.
She picks rosemary, rolls and rubs it in her fingers
and breathes in the smell, and
we disappear into
the buzz of bees on daisy, forget-me-not, Solomon’s seal,
the humming in the trees as
insects inch through the long grass,
catch the flashing yellow of a brimstone butterfly and
worms writhing lurid pink,
jellied with potential.
We watch the earth coming alive,
the gathering of industrious things
whose instinct it is to persist,
to halve
themselves, begin again to grow, whatever the circumstances,
no matter the threat of beaks or claws.
Whatever sugar there is to suck
will be sucked,
whatever earth there is to turn
will be turned,
there will be nests built
and then abandoned.
Margaret asks me how I’m getting on:
‘I won’t press for details, but I will just say
that I know it can’t be easy.’
She means you,
that she knows you can’t be easy,
that you are another thing to water and tend
and watch.
I snap a daisy from its stem and hold it out.
‘It’s fine. All good.’
She takes it, pushes it behind her ear and nods
as you call us back inside.
The lunch is a success,
you praise the wine,
the sauce,
the cake I have made that rose triumphantly
and which I decorated with a steady hand,
writing your name, looking forward to the large
slice I’d take.
You have taught me all about service
and the murderousness
of appetite.
I wonder what I taste like now.
Your friends praise you
and toast your good health,
toast your new book,
your career,
your future
and us.
Later, in bed,
lying in the darkness
and holding hands,
you say you have forgiven me for everything,
for behaving as if I was unhinged,
but you warn me very carefully
that I was really very ill
and next time I get to that point,
the point where I feel that I might be losing
my grip,
I must tell you
fast
so you can help.
I seem to like the softness of your voice,
I seem to be so compliant.
Leaning towards you, I kiss your cheek
and say,
‘Thank you, Tom,
for everything you’ve done.’
I convince you that I have convinced myself
that you took nothing, after all;
everything was there
where it should have been –
in other words
the empty files
were figments of my troubled mind.
I imagined the breach
of my privacy
and the fingerprints all over my keys.
I imagined the thesis so clearly typed.
I imagined how close I was to the end.
And, after all,
there was nothing to steal,
I’d just had some thoughts
that weren’t terribly original.
In fact –
‘We collaborated, Emma,
you should be pleased
that it’s worked out so well.
I think together we’ve taken this work further
than you might have done alone
and I’m sure this experience will stand you in good stead.’
I smile and nod
and tell you how clever you are.
WORK
You deliver me to the library and leave me to it
whilst you disappear into a lecture theatre
and say you’ll see me later at home.
I sit and read a bit,
stare out of the window,
distracted, listening to the students’ laughter.
Late, or lazy, they chatter,
oblivious to the precariousness of self.
I think of how
you think you own my words,
that I owe you this work
and this book I’m creating
and the years of my dreams held in its pages.
My fingerprints dissolve as I write
and perform the labour you can’t be arsed to undertake.
My wrists are thicker,
my fingers swell
and what was soft is hardening
and calloused with intent.
I’m angry enough to want to see you
beg
on your knees,
crucified in public,
reputation shredded,
finally castrated.
I cannot not plot. Will not
sit silent,
allow you credit you haven’t earned,
let you parse me
parcel me
lock me up like Colette,
counting my words
behind those gates.
What you don’t know is
I am working my way into the metal –
I am iron,
hard as nails,
and, heated, I can take on shapes,
bend myself, twisting, becoming the lock
impenetrable so your key no longer fits:
however you work it
inside me
I will
shut you out.
But for now I do my time.
It’s evening when I cycle home.
You have bought me a bike,
shiny red with a basket on the front,
and I breathe in the May evening.
Early summer, full of shadows
and the murderous sweetness of magnolia trees
spilling white petals all over the road,
dangerous in their slippery selves,
waiting to trip me if
I do not go carefully –
Lois tells me all the time to
Watch out,
as if there are ghosts
or spies in the pipes of the house or
pushing up between the paving stones.
The roses I planted have not yet bloomed,
although I water them daily,
watch them and wait for flowering.
I stand outside
breathing hard, breathless from the ride,
bicycle by my side,
and stare at the path
strewn with vines: morning glory
torn up by the roots and discarded like trash.
I presume we’ve been visited by some poltergeist.
‘Tom,’ I call, opening the door,
panting your name.
‘Have you seen this?’
You stand on the step in bare feet and shrug.
‘I was trying to help.
It’s just a weed,
right?’
(We don’t see the world the same way –
you don’t find beauty in the mundane.
Even a weed should have its day.)
The garden grows despite you;
to spite you
I planted things to make you sneeze
and you blow your nose,
and retreat.
Trying to bridge the gap
between our perceptions of the world,
keeping everything smooth, for now –
I don’t tell you you’re a twat,
but bend and bury the roots back into the crumbling soil
and hope for the best.
When I come into the house,
last sun in my eyes,
I hallucinate bodies
pocked with glowing contusions
the dusty air gaping with holes.
TRINITY TERM
UNDERCOVER
You begin again
back in college
third term tutorials and students
panicking about their finals.
I paint my nails and watch you pack your bag
while you complain of the smell
and I wonder when you will guess
that I am planting poison.
The train to London is noisy
the sun a yellow scab
hot enough to make the city stink.
I walk fast, away from the tube and the crowds,
to a library where it is quiet and cool.
A change of scene
is sometimes all you need
to do something amazing.
Lois meets me in the stacks
and we whisper,
heads close,
strands of hair
mingling –
you wouldn’t know if I was her
or she were me –
I like this blurring,
co-conspirators
conjoined in our machinations.
‘OK?’ she asks.
Her breath is sweet, like Coca-Cola,
her eyes shadowed, tired.
I know she will have stayed up reading for hours:
she is determined to help.
‘I’m fine.’
‘And him? Tom?’
The way she says his name always makes me shiver –
and if loathing had a colour
it would be the yellowing pallor
of Lois’s cheeks.
‘Oh God, he’s on top form.
He’s got a slot on In Our Time this week,
so, you know,
we’re awfully jolly right now
and also
the book tour’s being planned,
they’ve bought the rights in the US and want him to
do the universities, East Coast and West.
Tom’s like a pig, Lo,
wallowing in the stink of his own shit.’
She pulls a face,
and I read her immediately –
that she thinks you’re disgusting,
is amazed I can bear
to share your bed
and accept your breath and sweat and skin;
a Sadeian woman fed sweets
to make her stomach gripe.
We have our own
language brimming with spite, vengeful
but justified.
Born out of gaps,
our attack will be almost invisible,
virtually incomprehensible:
we know new ways to express
what’s hiding underneath,
can
peel up skin and find where the
wickedness waits.
We will explode from there like arterial blood:
detonating mines –
ripping flesh.
We like playing with
meanings that could exist but don’t –
semantic lacunae, I joke.
It all feels so
terribly scholarly
in the funniest way –
and somehow easier to cope when I go home
to offer up my pretence of love.
It makes me laugh that I
know so many things that you don’t.
Give me the confidence of a mediocre white man
who thinks he has the right to
a woman’s work –
her words
and womb
and everything else.
We handle books as if they are dirty bombs
with the power
to shred you,
render you impotent
and unemployable.
And if it’s cruel to set this trap
I don’t care.
I show Lois the poem I wrote last night
and she holds it against her chest
right by her heart
and nods,
Yes.
ARIEL, AGAIN
‘What are you doing here?’
I confront him and
he flushes,
embarrassed to be found
watching us.
‘Were you spying on me?’ I ask.
He stares at the paperwork
the books in my pile
and assesses the words written on my screen.
I slam it shut.
He’s just another man
with no idea of boundaries.
‘What are you doing here?’ he wants to know,
