by the same author phobia
The Learned Goose Jo Br a n d on
Valley Press
First published in 2015 by Valley Press Woodend, The Crescent, Scarborough, YO11 2PW www.valleypressuk.com First edition, first printing (November 2015) ISBN 978-1-908853-55-4 Cat. no. VP0077 Copyright Š Jo Brandon 2015 The right of Jo Brandon to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without prior written permission from the rights holders. A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library. Printed and bound in the EU by Pulsio, Paris. www.valleypressuk.com/authors/jobrandon
Contents tabu tales The Fall 13 Peeling 15 It’s like 16 Market Day 17 We Were Engaged in the Summer of ‘56 19 The Diamonds 22 Burton’s Seminar 24 Forget what you’ve been told 25 Inside Out 27 Family Ledger, Last Tallied 1670 28 2pm Appointment at 99 Lincoln Way, 7th March 2004 30 Miss Austen’s Aunt 31 Down the Aisle 32 tales withou t magic Girlguiding 35 Loveplay 36 On the Wall 37 Two Thousand and Nine 38 Personal Ergonomics 39 Breakfast 40 The Learned Goose 41 On the Line 42 The Melancholy of Departure 43 First-footing 45 Homemaking 46
tales of rebirth The Hanged Pigeon 49 Bullen 51 Gold 52 Catherine of Siena 53 Half and Half 54 John 55 Pair 56 Phryne 57 Madrasa 59 Cinnabar 60 To Dust 61 Notes on the text 63
Acknowledgements The poet would like to thank the following publications, in which some of these poems first appeared: A Poetic Primer for Love and Seduction: Naso was my Tutor and The Anthology of Age published by The Emma Press, Butcher’s Dog, Magma, Dream Catcher, Cake, Myths of the Near Future, The Space It Might Take: Highgate Poets 27th Anthology and The Cadaverine Collection. ‘Bullen’ was published in ‘Offending Frequencies’, the Winter 2012 issue of Poetry Review edited by Bernadine Evaristo, as part of Poetry Portraits – a photography and poetry collaboration with poet and photographer Yemisi Blake. Versions of ‘On the Wall’, ‘Two Thousand and Nine’ and ‘Home Making’ were published on Like Starlings (www.likestarlings.com) as part of a poetry conversation with Sarah Hymas. ‘We Were Engaged in the Summer of ‘56’ was originally written as part of ‘As in Waking Dreams’, a collaboration between the University of Leeds and Opera North. I worked with composer William Finn to re-imagine Schumann and Chamisso’s ‘A Woman’s Life and Love’ as one of several commissioned original song cycles performed at the Howard Assembly Rooms, Leeds, May 2011. I would like to thank poet Adam Strickson and composer Cheryl Frances-Hoad for the opportunity to participate in this wonderful project. ‘Girlguiding’ was inspired by artworks by Adam Bridgland and written for performance at his exhibition launch at The Poetry Café Spring 2014. I would also like to thank Moira Goff, curator of the excellent ‘Georgians Revealed: Life, Style and the Making of Modern Britain’ exhibition at the British Library. It was here I found my Learned Goose!
Thanks are also due to the ever-supportive and encouraging Jamie McGarry of Valley Press, Emma Wright and Rachel Piercey of The Emma Press, Sophie Baker, Highgate Poets, The Poetry School, Jacqueline Saphra and her wonderful course ‘The Plot Inside the Poem’, Kayo Chingonyi, Miriam Nash and Jasmine Cooray for their incredibly helpful ‘First Collection Surgery’ workshops, Katie Godman, and in particular for their continued love and encouragement, my wonderful partner Marcos Avlonitis and my family and friends.
‘Listen, I have a good idea. We’ll ask our cousin the carpenter to make us a calf out of wood and then paint it brown so that it will look like all the other cows. In time it’s bound to get big and become a cow.’ ‘Little Farmer’, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
Tabu Tales
The Fall after The Fall, Hugo van de Goes, 1479
He was happy with my form till he happened across yours. Like any child the impulse is to play not make; your limbs it seems are more pliable and your hearts more intricate. So the fact that I could wind myself into circles that inspired the sun, tie myself into copulative knots, make language in the sand, meant nothing but more possibilities for you. We lived together a good while – you wished your tongue could read the air like mine, I wished my eyes could talk. We grew further apart. Your hisses became syllabic, you whispered to one another. Tried to meet you in the middle: hid in bushes growing legs that lent no length, couldn’t bring me any closer to your ear. My face craved reflection, stung with unread frowns and smiles.
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I wish, I wish it were as simple as a piece of fruit. Truthfully, there was no taboo hanging from that tree – it was just where we played, but your ideas grew quicker than trees and you imagined fruits that would never grow here and they still won’t grow here just as I don’t grow and everything without you stays the same.
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Peeling When you peel a potato you know what to expect: milky flesh, a few sprouting eyes, curves and clefts that feel better to a blind thumb than a peeler. You know what the peel will look like piled up: locks of sugar-watered hair, clumps of dried scalp, fractures of speckled eggshell. You know it will smell earthy, water clinging to muck, hardly any will stick to your fingers, though it leaves a stain of half-imagined farms and untrod fields in the sink. When you peel a potato your mind wanders with the slick of your knife, that you glide towards you, gut-wards though you know it’s unsafe, like shaving your legs upwards when you know they are soon uglier that way; you expect to see flecks of blood on the potato because you know you cannot always be so careless and so unstained.
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It’s like 10 pence held above a torch the back of a pale baldman’s head a dap of Tippex fingertip dipped in white chocolate
it’s like a pearl nestled in dark velvet (but we wouldn’t say that)
the reverse of a plate bottom of a mug an ice cube fizzing in diet cola the back of an eye a wet tissue
it’s like a petal fallen on midnight water (that wasn’t added either)
blob of hair mousse spilt milk on black tiles a spat pip a ball of paper a crumpled ball of paper
– with each of these words pock-marking the surface (I admitted) for Marcos
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Market Day Its hooves clattered like a sack of pans thrown down the stairs. Smithfield cobbles rang so loudly I thought the rag-and-bone man must have gone mad, but that was to be me, yes, that was to be me. What else can you do when you’re about to fall? I put my arms out. With every sinew that had ever wrung a stained sheet, seen off a leery drunk or snapped a rooster’s neck, every sinew that had borne a child, sweated a fever, blackened an Aga, set a curl, lost a girlhood, scrubbed a floor, beat the house clean, with every sinew I held off that battering ox. I looked into an eye so dark I knew there was no voice inside its head to bargain with. They came at last with a noose and five men’s brawn; I fell like a pile of laundry dumped on the floor. I can’t unclench my fists. They don’t understand why I’m lost in the dark stew of its eyes, that darkness thickened with soot and boot wax,
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a darkness that settles like dirty snow all over my home, all over my thoughts and forms a smutty cradle-cap all over my daughter’s skull. It pools on my kitchen floor, from under the stove, it fills the sink – its eyes have moved into my husband’s face, into my dear mother’s embrace, they are under my lids and lashes, pressed against my own eyes; a screel of glass I wait to shatter – knowing I should, knowing no flesh and blood woman has the strength for this.
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We Were Engaged in the Summer of ‘56 1. buttons I imagine the undoing, the sliding of garments down my legs, weight of silk shirts, shimmies, slips falling away. My mind catches on the hows of stockings, brassieres. I practice in front of the mirror blushing at my own imbalance allocating him the trickier clasps and rolls. The order must be simple: from the outside in, like dinner forks or shopping lists. Are buttons the other way round on men’s shirts? Zips and ties tangle my order of procession. Perhaps when I appear from the bathroom powdered and calm he will already be loosening sheets, and once the sheets are loosened … I do not know. I do not know, these dots are my mother’s and a dozen authoresses’. The movie blackouts belong to men, all of whom, it seems can see in the dark –
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2. prix fixe I plan our days in menus; aperitifs, a fish course right through to cheese: weekday fricasseed beef, consommé Bellevue, slow-cooked casseroles, chowders, soups, Sunday-baked hams, meat-loaves, sweet soufflés, chiffon pies and cherries jubilee. At the door ready with juleps and highballs, seasonal eggnog, always at six, always as punctual as our umbrella stand. Box his hat, hang his coat and receive my prize; his smile, his fully-lit smile. Hold his attention between courses as my hands quiver under platters and fondue cauldrons. Watching him, I forget to eat. Later, by fridge light, I scoop finger-curls of half-fat butter, thinking of tomorrow’s triumph.
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3. chequebook Balancing numbers that don’t translate smoothly into your pre-stencilled columns, outlining income, outgoings: utilities, tax, food, my bloating pot of pin money. I wear nothing but black but my pocketbook is a bouquet of white, green and gold: bonds, bills, coins. You did try once to show me long multiplication, but my head was already filled with the things I needed to know. You would resent the 10 per cent of what you left that I must slip to some sure accountant – I heard about a woman taken to court for forgetting to pay a licence for something or other. I know you would not like that either, you would appreciate that I tried to fill my time usefully between supper and bed, always my restless hours.
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