AnnMarie Eldon

blocks n personal

Of what use to me that Ashcroft is to quit
the top justice post after a tumultuous tenure
and Evans is to go too?

This junk is a leftover from my American
days.

Neither do I want his moissonite fakery
from off the Shopping Channel
as if I am his mother about

to flash herself on a cruise.
I can smell his lies

through the wireless absence his touching
of boys his dissembling his chemical promises
turning to vows if I'd let them.

I have a rectocele and a cystocele caused by
birthing a ten and a half pounder over eleven
years ago.

For this I have to use Tampax Compak tampons
(which come in plastic not cardboard tubes)
as the collapsible ones won't go

up. These alleviate me of my concern for trees:
I don't know if the unusables are made with
paper from sustainable forests

and being an avid recycler I worry about
endless little cylinders filling my
South Oxfordshire District Council green box.

So... I read that the American Attorney General
made a hand-written letter of resignation.
I'm sure this makes a difference.

Meanwhile my vagina is the cause
of a certain sort of chain reactive anxiety
and HRT will ensure this lasts well into
my ninetieth year...

Unlike the new Administration
I mustn't flush the remains
yet perhaps the headlines could
lead to some useful clue
after all -

that I am not cavernous but collapsing
inwards goes against Hubble's Law
and at least has me identify
with part of the small print:
"The demands of justice are both
rewarding and depleting."

I am emptying my life of him as he
emptied his of me for years my phone
available to the French man their Paris oysters
emailed details whilst I was hungry and on benefits.

Almost welded to someone who could bring
four ready meals to my fridge and take home three.
We shared Waitrose Meatballs in Gravy
at a distance and it was his testimony for
'being together yet apart'

The Chinese Lanterns growing wild in the public car park
verge warned me of four more years-of-this as he forgot the fiver
for the petrol and feigned concern over a puddle.

I scrubbed up real good for his fancy college bash
but it never occurred to him his future wife was dressed
head to foot in Oxfam and might
have liked a dress bought
out of dead ma's
money.

Back at his quasi-family he projects his fellow residents
as passive-aggressives and edits me
yet again.
Probably obsequious with some other poor pre-damaged woman...

What chance a real family with flesh and blood
children?

At best a chest stained semen.
At worst an AIDS test.
(To a writer it's all grist for the mill)

I could settle for less.
I could block the New York Times
and get a life.