This poem is taken from PN Review 273, Volume 50 Number 1, September - October 2023.
Three PoemsWe were lucky with the weather on the day you died. Unusually warm
for the time of year so the perspiration between my cheek and the
screen of my iphone surprised me when I couldn’t recall your street
name for the ambulance: ‘For god’s sake, it’s October!’ – I laughed
with the operator. The heating was on full whack, not that you’d have
been able to feel it, but I remember worrying that the paramedics must
be sweltering in all that gear they wear so I hunted for ice in your
freezer. Behind the potato waffles was a frost-burned tray holding a
single lonely cube. Still, I popped it out and offered drinks before they
carried you downstairs. Those spiral steps must’ve been awkward and
I thought I might shout out, involuntarily, like the time you shouted
after me when I rode a camel down the motorway with that sweet boy
in Sharm El Sheikh. I saw your slippers and cigarettes by the back door
and caught myself wondering if you’d need them. Silly. In the police
car on the way home I talked about how long those road works were
taking at Scarcroft intersection. There was a woman waiting to cross
at the temporary lights and honest to god, she was wearing a woolly
hat. Slate-grey with a lilac pom-pom. She must’ve been roasting. I
watched her, bewildered, until we’d driven all the way around the bend.
When I got home I unpacked fridge things from my shopper and put
the kettle on before I told the children you’d died. The oldest, well he
just cried and cried and that’s him all over but the youngest asked
what was for dinner. I thought we could have salad, I remember saying,
if it hasn’t gone limp in all this bloody heat.everything must go
we plunder it of buffed mirrors
while escalators jag
hosiery turns to topiary
spouts hot air and dander
sometimes we go further
mauve and lemon paper
hacking at sequins
crushing on all the blue velvet
using jointed arms
sometimes we unlatch entirely
finding farmers turning scythes
for the scent of rain
...
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