She paints,

                               to save herself. She paints.
 
But never portraits: that way would come too close
To knowing others. It’s for her alone she paints
And sketches, etches, draws. At glass
She’s good: captures exactly refracted light.
Brass allows her wealths of self-indulgences.
Flowers, apples, plants fasten to her palette,
And still-lifes stiffen under brushes’ silences.
While she’s pretty fine at line, she feels bare shapes
Are where she’s best. And though, at times, she wishes
Men would share their innernesses
Has to be content with photographs and negatives.
Grapes and ferns she paints. With clear precision
Her strokes fill in the space with form and light
And cover paper’s waste of naked white.
 
And when her husband’s home
She’s at her glass, and paints. She paints as if possessed
shades in the lines that fear and age are framing in her face
to draw her husband’s gaze she brushes up her eyes
she paints to save her face and vanity
but still their silences stiffen to still lives
 
and when he isn’t home and his nude landscapes
where he comes so stroking-close to knowing others stretch outside her bed
draw all his flesh from hers block her from his head
and etch away her sanity
she paints to keep appearances
 
and when he isn’t there she paints
she squeezes feelings stirs herself and touches up          the wound
                                             sketching in her face                       the wound
                                             etching in her mind                         the wound
                                             drawing in her thighs
 
she paints
to save herself she paints
 

Roger Elkin

1st Prize, Sylvia Plath Award, World Order of Narrative Poems, 1987;
published in collection, Blood Brothers, New and Selected Poems, 2006, Headland,
ISBN 1-902096-96-7

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Oriental Poppies

You knew he never liked you
 
so you tensed when he stumped past
or, when he tried to tie you down, you slipped
from strangleholds, ducked and dodged
rearing creatures plunging out of reach,
your Gorgon heads bent on deflowering wombs,
buds rising to climaxes, petals a menstrual effort,
flowers a wound-tearing, throbbing to blood-clots.
 
And, on late June evenings, when he shuffled by,
pulling on his cigarette, inspecting the perfection
of his estate, your luminous face loomed after him,
your clown-sad eyes gaping against surprise attack,
petals lipping the last dregs of light,
all of you breathing air’s headiness
and his tobacco taint.
 
You pulsed.
You pulsed.
 
And, after flowering, when slash-kniving he hacked
you down, you sapped thin milk sperming on his fingers,
haunted hands even after lathering
and, pretending death, turned back stalks to black.
 
You wept.
You wept.
 
And when he grubbed you up
dug deep, deeper, so no inch should speak against him,
and tossed taproots dripping on the compost,
fronds drooping, stems rusting into stick –
though diminished to this ignominy –
you didn’t give in.
 
To my urgent whispering (crying Mother, Mother)
you thistled teeming through; bristling stronger,
thriving on his spite; lithe sons coming to manhood
in a richer borning.
 
You grew.
Again you grew.
 

Roger Elkin

1st Prize, Yeats Club Open Poetry Competition, 1987;
published in collection, Fixing Things, 2010, Indigo Dreams Publishing,
ISBN 978-1-907401-27-5

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Dying, she became islanded in catness

All that restless energetic cutting
across small-talk, that pushing
to attention, padding to and fro,
brushing against others, that being seen –
now reduced to hutched limbs,
old-cat-curled; apart; brows furrowed;
eyes closed; energy gone still; fused
to intensities of a twenty-day sleep
in heady concentration of seeing it all out.
 
Her hands – immobile, deadened – became paws,
the fingers curled in insensate stillness;
and stroking her hair surrendered moultings
of fur that riddled your hands no matter
how hard you tried ridding them of her.
 
Locked in darkness, senses dulled
by morphia, her mouth’s keyhole yawping
helplessly at anyone bold enough
to nurse her food/milk/water; or
answering without sound to everybody
possessing her name’s password –
Mary, Mary – became anyone’s pet now.
 
And dying, old-cat-like,
her husband, her daughter deeped
daily to inadequacies, not having
the kit to fit a life together, not holding
the tools to comprehend what was happening –
to her, to self, to each other – but kept going
on guesswork, growing humbled and flummoxed,
awed by the dumbstruck stillness, numbed
by the enigma of illness.
 
And dying, her husband, her daughter
became any old lover of pets:
animal-compassionate, flawed and floored
by the enormity of distances between,
and torn apart inside and out
by a mind they couldn’t just reach.
 

Roger Elkin

1st Prize, boho Open Poetry Competition, 2003;
published in collection, Rites of Passing, 2002, Shoestring,
ISBN 1-904886-43-4

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Acting Blackbird

Dressed in jet like the villain
of a minor Jacobean tragedy
is nervy-bird, up-tight.
 
Sleek wheeler-dealer, steel-eyed
with slashings of smile,
lets no-one up-stage him:
muscles bullying in from the wings,
ready for a fight;
accosts robins full-on;
trips-up greenfinches;
tackles sparrows from behind.
 
Or trounces, automaton,
across patio and lawn to choreograph
his birdbath-splashing-routine,
then diagonals away
to skulk among shadows,
swaggering beneath rhododendron
and beech-hedging,
his dagger of beak unsheathed.
 
Hopes he’ll get away with his asides
where he runs through leather-jackets
and makes the fat worm squirm.
 
Soliloquy is his forte:
adorns the morning chorus
with mellow flutings
till ratcheting the action to panic level
with his chattering patter
accusing all the world
of being on the edge of danger.
 
Dies off-stage,
unsung, unmourned.
 

Roger Elkin

2nd Prize, Bank Street Writers Open Poetry Competition, 2010;
published in collection, Bird In The Hand, 2012, Indigo Dreams,
ISBN 978-1-907401-87-9

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