|
in
collection, A Season of Small
Insanities, 2009,
Salt
Publishing, ISBN 978-1-8447150-9-1;
in
pamphlet collection, Bubble, 2004, Flarestack, ISBN 1-900397-77-3;
and
in the BBC Radio4 play of the same name, October 2004
Marrying Richard
Harris
This was not what
you wrote in your diary
when
you were twelve years old.
Not
this holding of a second dead child
in
a room next to the scrape of plates,
all
those uneaten fish Friday lunches,
the
drumming of pipes in a busy sluice.
I
will marry Richard Harris.
Sing
on Top of the Pops.
Not
bite my nails.
Fill
a country house with children.
Write
a book. Have pierced ears.
Drive
a car.
Live
in Ireland by the sea.
Wear
jeans all the time.
Adopt
stray cats and orphans.
Own
two wolfhounds.
Ride
a horse better than Christine White's.
Travel
to one name from each page in my atlas.
This
was the hope list in HB pencil,
your
future plans in neat joined-up writing.
You
rock him and cry as is called for.
Marrying
Richard Harris would have avoided this,
stopped
this falling apart
in
a space set aside for the purpose.
Andrea
Porter
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