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What is your Name? Who gave you this Name? What did your Godfathers and Godmothers then for you?
I come from a place with beech in its name; my name then was wished for, dropped from the mouth of an old woman, fat as a grandmother, soft, round as an egg.
Conceived in the eye of a sad man, I was born at the trip of a young woman’s foot, a tumble that rushed me, unready to air, light, gravity’s chill.
I was nourished on milk from the tip of a spoon, sugar-sweet, thickened with bread; and crucible tops from soft- boiled eggs, made yellow, salty with butter.
I grew fat, white as a grub, gurgled, babbled, spoke, settled for serious talk. Loquacious, prodigious, I figured the world in my mouth, made language a loose tooth
to push with my tongue — cylinder, Hollander, colander, kiosk, — I rolled it around, five years without stopping for breath. I gorged on its sweet, salt, bitter, sour,
sucked hard on it, bloodied the roof of my mouth with its acid. I come from the quiet of a coy girl, dark-eyed, slim at the waist, a girl in a green dress,
whose name then was chosen by men, who taught her to lower her eyes, press her lips, narrow her throat, swallow words down; who taught me the power of hush, hush, hush.
Her bones have leached themselves to honeycomb, quiet and unbidden they have given themselves up.
While life was playing out its game of tag, of kiss-chase, rock-a-bye, releasey-o,
its pantomime charade of chase-the-lady, close your eyes and count up to a hundred,
ready or not, the witch’s footsteps at her back have sneaked up and have caught her out, unsteady.
While she’s watched slips of moon grow fat and slice themselves away to sickle blades
her bones have thinned to claypipe brittle till she is a shepherd’s crook, a rusty angle-poise,
a number seven; a three-legged hobbler, story-book bent crone, blind but for the ground
to watch for specks and crumbs, a trail to lead her back, soft-boned and snug, to where she started.
She’d often been beguiled by clever men, quick-tongued and nimble-fingered, like the paper-folding poet she’d encountered, briefly, once.
Another had the perfect mouth to blow her smoke rings — she’d loved the way he tipped his head back, chin up, neck stretched taut, the way his throat moved with each puff after puff of perfect circle in the air.
An early lover brought her winkles from the East coast, wrapped in paper pokes; he sometimes tossed her pancakes, fed her gingerbread, and danced with her.
A special favourite travelled far by bus and train with all his own utensils, knives and cooking pots to roast her aubergines, sweet capsicum and artichokes.
Some brought her flowers — once, a quiet man from Manchester came carrying a reclaimed bishop’s mitre chimney pot he’d planted with geraniums.
She liked the gesture — like the topiarist who’d hidden in her garden night after night until her box hedge slowly shaped itself to a row of neat green hearts.
But she could not forget a Benedick who’d matched her, wit for wit with a straight face, who could toss grapes really high, catch them in his teeth and feed them to her, mouth-to-mouth without his lips quite touching hers.
after Giacometti
My head is a spoon that dips and scoops fine sugar from a china bowl, remembers sherbet ochre tongues and the stain on the tip of a finger shrivelled with sucking.
My face is a flower that turns with the sun sneaks a look from the edge of a tarmac square, remembers the scrape and bounce of fivestone chalks worn smooth and round with playing.
My back is an S that aches on a stool, remembers the scale of ascending C where thumbs go under, the broken key and the ring of a fender, bruised in simple time, by a poker's four-four beating.
My legs are a long case clock, a pendulum pair that swings and remembers great aunt afternoons the rub of a cut-moquette settee, a glimpse of a beaded muslined jug, and ticking.
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