AnnMarie Eldon

housework

2

I am about to bleed. Wednesday. Thoughts
Circus elephants are now banned. Some
artistes wrestle with chainsaws
but this is no relevant

substitution. There are clubs which one may join
Weiss writes: the Existence in an Actuality
is continuous with Existence beyond that
Actuality. I can't understand, not

even the capitals. Along Oxford Rd
plastic reads ZAM ZAM HALAL and I
shall miss it, each Wednesday, therapy
sessions debriefing a week and only latterly

in the final trimester of my allotted 18
months the promise of the Christian Aid
thrift shop and its vinyls for 20p each (upstairs
where sometimes they've forgotten to switch on the light). I

had a polaroid of my daughter sitting on
an elephant/1993 and she remembers
how huge                                              it was how high up
the zebra the lions a performing horse and now the cruelty. I

'm 26 years down the line from falling
in love, a broken leg                        counting steps
                             thus slow to the hermit's chapel at St. Govan's head
and back up the tide coming in fast the forced
jump the German army on exercise my being

blanket rescued.
I am about to bleed. There is no apparent group
although crazies aplenty and one prostitute in particular
We walk hauling bags or drive encrusted
by

our
secret
histories nights pitfalls someplaces we are banned
from all the many different kinds of inter-
course;                                                     yet I
have landed. Animals 'nd
                 philosophers
keep discourse

housework

1

she laid him out upon her table
and prayed his entrails certain
delusionary depositions salt
trails obsequious tides

he had twitched his navel
a postportentious apothecary's rose
old and seemingly slightly again rose
again and sunk breathing bequeathing

a something a most definite something a
snail's trail bitter yet sweet to swallows' hell
almost any bird with eyes could care to follow
licked shell then the rare kite tricked her swooped

woow picked her love clean from's bones
and the bare of 'im rare trickled a'red
and the bare of 'im
dead centre

derides the scrubbed the grain the suckering sheen
top knife pine index even floorboards unsilted
dermal to dermal alive coos then smiles
and the fatidic bird drops a pace slops

what's left all fibonacchic settling intestines back
where they came from snug their love
ooh antiseptic and all
in the right

Uncivil

Thirty four years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to one, Private England, a cigarette dangling from her mouth, giving a jaunty thumbs-up sign and pointing at the genitals of a young Iraqi, who is naked except for a sandbag over his head, as he masturbates the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. Three other hooded and naked Iraqi prisoners are met here on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it as a final resting place for those who are shown, hands reflexively crossed over their genitals who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that the photographs tell it all. England stands arm in arm with Specialist Graner; both are grinning we should do this and giving the thumbs-up behind a cluster of perhaps seven naked Iraqis, knees bent, piled clumsily on top of each other in a pyramid.

But in a larger sense we can not dedicate – we can not consecrate - we can not hallow this ground. There is another photograph of a cluster of naked prisoners. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled, here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. Then, there is another cluster of hooded bodies, with a female soldier standing in front, taking photographs.

The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they have, thus far, so nobly carried on. Yet another photograph shows a kneeling, naked, unhooded male prisoner, head momentarily turned away from the camera, posed to make it appear that he is performing oral sex on another male prisoner, who is naked and hooded.

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us - that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion - smiling, arms crossed - that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from bending over.

The earth too, is smiling.

days

war days

corsebleed let’s bush and clam
and crush the damn laugh and
atmosphere couple parts
muddied to married

calendar days

leak wet red ready days
upon wave wave smile
brave public sham
ragtime hooding

bloody days

partistic garden's at the still husband out
the tobe husband out the handouts not
the streated by humility to cometime

monkey days

good cream they're stream
god the laughs we could’ve (had)
eliminated when breated slightest havings
and from the sowing
panty parting out
slowing about

blow monthlies

bream of the streating
the conscious wounders
loveungrown to apologise
are to sort in the same
cast, we cast clouts
shout window open
out unadulterated

red communists week

rebellious as a garden
anythick with parts
corners out-rent
mercing there
calmness love
there shout
using

hanging season

expand anger at even at hurting
the parts matter angeless
bream of a sooth they're of
and filled we’re not them
we as not asthem

paining season

cleak is rare at hight distralia
mudslide red cry
red risiting
red dredsentence
reading now apart and sensible

the thinking part

now grown
not putting it about
the red risting
red dredsentence(s)(s)

the war days
the corsebleeds bushes
and clams
shams we
no part-
icalpate in