Heat like the flat of someone’s hand.
Each song is like a brick
baked by thick voices into something else:
boredom.
My mum can make a fist
with her whole body;
can sulk with her upper arms.
“Family Favourites”.
The soldiers’ wives’ requests
are like a parody of how she waits,
caught in the slow swell of a summer afternoon.
I’ve drawn a clown;
my hand keeps drawing it.
It wants to take the wait, the strings,
my mother’s mood (it settles
on things, like dust)
and force them into something smooth and effortless:
a strong line.
It keeps doing it, past eloquence,
scrubbing and scrubbing
at the page
until what’s left is blackness
and an ache,
the promise of my father.
Later, he will grin and gurn and keen –
each shift is ontological.
My leg will hammer up and down;
will scrub the other leg.
He will upend the wine bottle, like ketchup;
ask me if I love him.
My leg will tell him.
Published in A Brief and Biased History of Love.
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