AnnMarie Eldon

smooth 1

This week my priority is to circumscend
the fingerwagging head voices' tagging
but there are dulpications in furniture
patterns and not enough straightens.
Permutational, illyrical has gone
handle but one upon every thing:
a chair should not have one, nor
pencil which can after all be held
within a hand (a hand neither - )
may. There is no opposite to ad hoc.
Most's a must even compel one to mind
the nature-prelude yet be beneath me my
oh beneath-me-one!; let the disinfectant surface
.gatherers flee already fled displaced by
..song. Long awkward touching
...solemnity too immense to
...cross. I cannot plead
....come dust with me
.....come dust. Has
......not the same
....... sheen upon songone
it. First things first. Pretend sleek.
Then bend only as far as day goes.

and friends...

bound

I want to get off the wheel of life but someone's
coming for tea and I need to clean the house.
The ashuras are these horrible unrented jealousy
makers and keep playing tabla in the kitchen.
To quiet down they demand causation. They say
tidy away obvious totems: those in front of the tele
or any hung on personal photographs. Here's a
black and white one of me taken at the seaside,
smiling and it harbours a mini Ganesh across the
right hand corner of the frame which itself is
colour coordinated to fit the sitting room decor.
This is from a different religion so it follows I must
circumvent cross-contamination. Also I should
degore all previous flower arrangements, flush
demons and never tell. Whereas there's more
to swallow with fresh doom in pristine cups
and endless loss on the carpet. But hush,
that's the doorbell and my friend Margaret.

the origins in your past of what you had become

were never in any of the places I had not been to secondary roads we took to escape not to find no possibility whatever you said that the uniform green leaves of summer would start to turn into autumnal colours of an action to stay in one place: this the only possibility which still exists, a real continuity, endless possibilities homes never to be honoured because, now recognised and congealed into fact: your free hand touched the animal despite Baxter Black's advice this not a beast drawn at random but who you are now: a trip which wasn't planned and which we didn't apparently fall into: Eastern North and deep South alike you were made homeless, forced out at gunpoint knowing already eight seconds is all you've got you can hide but you can't keep on running

in

there is bed rotation too
many adults and
two children and

too few rooms. A
bedroom door to
memory which

stands ajar only
enough for air flow so
very cold alone – moon-

light none - parents gone
drinking n
nanny a

white bird's nest topped ghost laid out
in the other
bed

room. They both scream mommy it
seems continuously
they both seem to

make the same mistake to crave the
woman who
drove the

screws in who fixed the
iron bar to the
top of

the door so that
it couldn't be
opened

more than a few inches
wide
so

they wouldn't get out. Soon
soon she'll be
back

drunk and
with any luck and
despite heels reach up unhook and

let herself in and by the skin of
their teeth they'll be bidden
their ritual

urination before they
wet themselves where they
have been left lying crying but

is this her their mommy or
their dying nanny or
the ironmonger

come to do the
necessary?

egg talk

the sea is a turtle bound for her beach whatever the moon incountable ugly, necessary numbers are hell no one way to lay to bury guilt yet many, many models: legal or juridical or theological or I dreamt love was mere belly-gloss was retched and wretched scutes-tempted shove-spew or froth was pact was hurt was cost was loss. So confound your palms-together kneeling righteousness an arribada on yer balancing act we are boundary not sea the real is a predator

m'other

there is nothing shaft
about her

no sunlight
nor even straight

arguments. If forgotten
cannot have

been anything
ground in

in she is in dust
and twitches

scrubbing, scrubbing
away: it's not

only done publicly
for money

but nightly on
private parts

and not the soap after all

which burned
but her determined

round round and
round
of

.................................... dream was you see
...........................theirs are a misogyny
..................teempted for severence's special
.................some steps harder to
...................arrangement but not yet
...................only gleek'd by offchance
....would be his dogging subversion
....might be his night bladder(ha!) catchingshort
..........................................hr. a maletolted on her
.......................................hope all is well there misprizal
...................................oh is it still ok what we do?
.....................................heaviness upon her
....................................meds might
.....................................sleep will not
...................................catch a fall-
...................................star
.....................always, always
.................sad away the scriptural screw
.........thumtacked continual havingto readinto
............then no basis
............then
............whatever happens
no basis

bedtime

her body was her twin's but there were two
of them so always the argument who went
first

there was no hot tap only
cold so water had to be boiled
in the kettle and poured into the

bowl and there was no special bowl
only one used for washing up
it was enamel and had to be

put on a towel as the table was polished
and there was only one table
and that was in the back

room as there were only two
rooms and the front room
was the best room

and never heated and only used
in the summer or for visitors
so they washed in the

bowl on a towel on the table in the
back room and argued who went
first

and whoever went first had to strip and
both parents watched them
whoever

stripped first had to
wash with the
flannel the

body in a strict order
from the face to the
feet down

with no
soap on the
face as it was bad for the complexion

and there was fairy soap and then
when lux came out it was lux and then
camay but camay came much much later and by then

they had breast buds developing and mounds
but there were still arguments
about who would go

first. Eventually they were allowed to wash
in the scullery with the
bowl in the

sink but by then the
bowl was plastic
and the

pubic hair
showed