AnnMarie Eldon

generalational

deprived how? pub tiles
glazed bile not bottle green
all bottles inside – the only
toys bottle tops plied
daddy comforter. I

hide: Jew, Irish, blacks, fag stenched,
factory thin
thick chip shop fat
mommy intoxicator dues
my bladder on slops

thunder, Christmas, Saturday night,
Sunday Night at the London Palladium, any
excuse no prioritising stuff
your anaesthetising love
concoction Madame

Smotherer madwoman mother no motherer
shoulda ran washed cooked scrubbed swept
but sat stared twitched mock-slept
clobbered him a’damn snorer
pinned y’self against escape

childhood safety-pinned nightdress thing
to the flannelette
bottom sheet lest
the war wind bomb butterfly
daddy love Blew you fanlight

away. Impregnated by your own progenitorator
cousin asthmatic sterile
grandfather’s double
every family cupboard
every culpable skeleton

plumped by Mackeson
Aphrodite agoraphobic
me arm in arm with shadow twin
adorable inseparable how angry dropped
how concocted how deplorable how

spent by 12: who would want to know
cept them 60 s 70 s sex marauderers
any man who could would let it let it let
as if for rent but free screamin’
hold me hold me hold me

don’t sit smoke read withdraw
each book photographically read
pages turned at random
a sci-fi addict passive aggressive
who walked spent dominoed

cauled weekly wages responsibility silently
my stereotypical lover man
my intellectual fantasy man
measure me grown with little pencils ticks
up doorjamb adoring pricks making wrong

jumbled lineage gypsy throwback
wench fed whiskey rum Advocat Babycham
damn you all genes with no circadian
cept knees house maid lamb sacrificial
stronger for their prayerfall

henged

saved for whenever he couldor would
rather than being areas of day-to-day activity
fact that their ditches were located inside their banks
indicated that they would have been used

in a defensive function
if it got serious and that the barrier
their earthworks provided was and is more likely to have been functional rather than symbolic

not like flags nor even emblems but family matters
and private and different for each of them
according to no formal
conjectured that whatever he took to be

inside his enclosures was intended to be separate
from the outside world
and perhaps only known to select individuals
or groups; this alignment a contentious

issue. Popular belief that theirs towards certain heavenly bodies
in fact orientation highly invariable
and more determined by local topology
armchairs and such rather than any

desire for spiritual orientation
a slight tendency for having an entrance
set in the north or north-west quarter smile
identified following no statistical analysis only gut-

full whilst generally their axes aligned approximately south east to north west or northone
two southwest but who could care
less
authorities argue but none to look

up
none to reference on this particular no
go. Structures used as declinometers
used to measure positions of rising or setting
often considerably post-

dated, themselves off the back foot and not necessarily
connected and certainly not necessarily connecting
conjectured that they could have been synchronized
yet planting doubts

or timing unshared religious rituals poles

apart
stones would indicate

during whilst others appeared
framed certain markers so that nearby others
do not mark nor do not interfere nor do not with such observations
finally placed at particular

lassitudes a number where the same two indicated she
this time rising and setting away from
for both the spring in his garden
and the spring in her step

frightened her with its unaccussédtomed courage
henges she learned from
and was present from the extreme north to the extreme south of her body

so her departure could not
have been of greater
impor
stance

ingelegde kool


ashamed nevertheless I laugh
at her larder’s contents
the date on one jar
says (apparently) 1987
its contents no longer burgundy but
grey, shrivelled

                                                  ...are endless others
the worst oyster sauce 1991
and so it goes on and on
and on until I nearly burst

but it is this
this cabbage
so right-at-the-
back
so preserved
so having been round the world
by international packers and removers

which represents the year their daughter
had her first seizure and there is to this day
as far as I know a debate between the

parents as to who carried
the unconscious child
to the hospital

I understand it now: jar as perfection's
headstone priced in gilders
and I see a cruel man
toying with a mother’s

loneliness

and me, sarcastic, locked in acid bile
having bought the lies, lid,
complicit, hook, line
and sinker