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last update: 10th Jul 10

 

 

A Man Greets His Wife from Her Short Break Away                      Her Things

 

In the Garden                      Pigeon Love

 

A Man Greets His Wife from Her Short Break Away

The first thing they do is embrace.
Fat smiles stay on their faces
all the way to the restaurant.

He eats ribs with sticky, podgy fingers.
She bites chicken wings with shiny lips.
They have a pudding each and share another.

In the car, she tells him about a girl she saw,
with a short, spotted skirt that flapped
around one long limb.

‘There wasn’t even a stump to satisfy me,
just a space where the leg should’ve been’.
‘Was she very pretty?’

‘Yes she was.’
They stop talking and at traffic lights
he strokes her thigh, instead of saying

how sad her story sounds. Quietly, he resents the one-legged girl
for changing the mood between them, resents his wife
for telling him the tale at all.

Making love to her later, it’s a pretty teenager
sitting astride his wide belly. One leg tucked behind,
leaving the torso, smooth and deformed, moving over him.

Rebecca Goss

in collection, The Anatomy of Structures, 2010, Flambard Press,
ISBN 978-1-906601-17-1;
published in Ambit, issue 58, 1999, ISSN 0002-6772



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Her Things

Every time I sit and piss in your bathroom
I don’t stare at my toes or pale hairs on my thigh,
I stare at the shelf above the radiator.
Cacharel perfume, Clinique toner No.1,
a glass jar of cotton wool pads, razors, dust.
Wrapped soaps from hotels, Clarins freebies,
a deep jar of moisturiser, that I opened once,
saw the fossilized swipes of her fingers.

Eventually, I ask if we can move it all.
You are frowning, quizzical. I pull on your arm,
lead you upstairs to look at the shelf
where we realise her belongings have morphed
into mine. Untouched for so long they were invisible,
now a woman breathes again in this house
and you thought I had placed my things there,
that I had unpacked them, that I was staying.

Rebecca Goss

in collection, The Anatomy of Structures, 2010, Flambard Press,
ISBN 978-1-906601-17-1;
published in Stand, 183, Vol 7(3), 2007, ISSN 0038-9366



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In the Garden

My trowel spoons out marbles, three muddy
eyeballs, each with its curve of yellow iris.
I wipe them clean, let them clink in my palm,

imagine my house with children in – the marbles’
journey from bedroom, to pocket, to garden,
to ground. I push them back into the wet dark,

dud bulbs for worms to pull blindly
into sockets of soil, their squirming lengths
expecting them to rot or take root.

Rebecca Goss

in collection, The Anatomy of Structures, 2010, Flambard Press,
ISBN 978-1-906601-17-1;
published in Mslexia, Issue 33, AprMayJune, 2007



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Pigeon Love

I know he sweats in his bed about me.
Nights before races are longest,
as he dreams of the money my feathers
can make him, sees my eager beak pointing

towards home. Nights like this are hard for me too,
caging us together, my love and I,
leaving me to nudge her plumy neck,
peck that secret part beneath her wing.

He relies on widowhood to get me back,
simple but it works. Passion, sex, comfort
being parted from all that, makes me fly faster,
guarantees I’m a winner. When that businessman

in Taiwan, bet $50,000, did he know he wagered
on mourning and love? At six days old, they punched
a ring on my leg, the number defining my lot,
who I belonged to and he does care for me –

pets me with chubby, tender hands
but she’s the one who increases my rapidity,
her softness accelerates swiftness,
lift up your wing, high so I can see, I’m coming home.


‘Widowhood’ – term used to describe the period racing pigeons spend apart from their mate during flights.

Rebecca Goss

in collection, The Anatomy of Structures, 2010, Flambard Press,
ISBN 978-1-906601-17-1;
highly commended, Way with Words/Mirehouse Poetry Competition, 2007. Judge Ruth Padel



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