and pets the dog as if in praise. If he registers my surprise he doesn’t let on.
„Maggie!“ he roars „Wud ye put the kettle on!“ and goes into the living room to put the telly on. Maggie, a big woman spilling out of shapeless clothes, appears through a doorless doorway, sniffs the air, then seeing me, tries to flatten down her toilet brush shock of hair. Behind her, her spitting image, her eldest son Ian, smirks.
„Och it’s Craferd, aul’ Craferd.“
I stick out my tongue at him.
„Never mind him!“ shouts Maggie and pushes him back into the living room. „Go mik us a cup o’ tay, ye cheeky hallion, ye.“ And then to me „Sharn’s in the back bedroom tryin’ tae get wee Adele tae sleep.”
„Oh“
„Och sure ye’ll be alright. Go aun in. She´ll be pleased tae see ye.“
In the dim, curtains badly drawn, Sharon is bent over a cot singing softly. I make a big show of closing the door carefully, and am rewarded with a smile and a whispered invitation to come and look. An impossibly tiny baby, with big liquid eyes and jet back curls, is sucking on a dummy and staring riveted at her mother.
„She’s lovely.“ I whisper in awe. And indeed she is. Up until now I could never really see what all the fuss was about as regards babies. All this cooing and geeing and soppification. And then I stare too at her mother. Can this be the same girl who had tried to engage me in a conversation about my sex life at the toothpaste counter less than a year and a half ago? While I had blushed and stammered in my supermarket overalls, and tidied up rows of mouthwashes behind my weekend counter, she had looked at me knowingly.
„There are things you can use, you know.“
And while she was giving birth and learning to nurse I was drinking my way through my first year at university, learning little in the way of academic knowledge, but a lot about life. And politics, philosophy, unrequited love. And deeper meanings. Or so I thought. But now, perched here on the edge of a bed in a dusty cluttered room, I realize I know nothing. Nothing at all.
The meaning of it all
What is
love?
Frogs or
Aubergines bursting
at their purple seams
or me pushed gamely up against a small town wall
wanting it all
fuck hesitate!
fucking it up
in true film fashion
slipperless
pretending not
to believe in the myth
losing myself to learning lessons?
so then
what the fuck
is?
Me, aged six
The family garden in the 1970’s
Hair
Still there, still fair
pretty as the picture
I am looking out of
with my brother, and
a row of dolls, lined up
legs kicking the technicolour air
of the bright 60’s sunshine.
The family garden
still made of grass
stretching away behind us into the blue
Sperrin Mountains.
Idyllic you may think
but we are already old and worried,
discontent
posing for pictures
on a Sunday afternoon
The Protestant family album
Oh! How cute! Is that your brother?
Did he really have such white hair?
And weren’t you pretty, then!
Then.
And then we turned to play
upset the dolls
fists and legs flying in the air
For Gawd’s sake! Can’t a body
have a bit o’ peace around here!
Peace?
No!
Like the hair
It’s not there
Memory Tricks
Long legs hold me
I cannot breathe
sacks of flour in a dusty storeroom
we are hiding, but how?
Surely we are being missed
the dentist’s drill whines on children’s bones
the milk cart starts up
and out in the fields the smell of slurry
spreads, like the new healthy margarine
Tomorrow a magician will come
To trick coins out of children’s ears
From between their fingers
he will reward them with chocolate money
and orange lollipops
but you will get none
you will not be picked
again
amen
pull the cold leeches from the toilet walls
pick at your skin
don’t let them in
Exposure
Cold air
On
