soundings issue 8 Spring 1998 Five poems Booking in Is it the planned feel to it I fear - the confirmed flight ticket with its carbons' slither? The letter telling me simply 'You have a bed'? Is it the vast spaces, the wrap in cloud and the way gravity rules, and yet is lost? Either way I know I'll be on my back pressed into scant upholstery over iron and someone else will be regulating my breath. And either way there's only a small resurrection after it's over, when the retro thrust reins in the engine and slews the plane to face the terminal building. Or the reining-in as pain - the first step to healing, the surgeon says - tugs me back from cloud to coming round. Catherine Byron
New Year Caught in the crossfire of the midnight peal Dead on the stroke of twelve Janus looks back, looks forward, does not feel The rush of angels' wings, the turning wheel Stone eyes locked on himself. And so this most momentous moment passes The clock moves on again: life as it was, is. Jane Evans
Grandma's winner In the end the mangle stood rusting in the back yard, its tight pressed mouth I worried I'd trap my fingers in. They delivered the shiny new spin dryer one summer in her fifties. It fitted neatly under the stairs but more often than not was left in the dark corner by the kitchenette and covered with a table-cloth. She dropped the boiled whites in with wooden tongs. It made a little popping noise before she could safely open it, and out they came, flattened and impressed with the dryer's patterns. No more clothes dripping in the shed: we washed our overalls in the evening and had them dry by morning. It liberated her, and us. But she still stood grappling with the ironing board, spitting on the iron's tarnished base, fire-light against her auburn hair. Between pressing her dresses, she peered over her glasses, yelling at Mick MacManus on the Saturday Wrestling to stop his shenanigans and get up off the mat. Frances Angela
Soundings Mother scrubbing the floor She had a dancer's feet, elegant, witty. We had our father's, maverick spreaders of dirt. Dirt from London, dirt from Kent, Mud, dust, grass, droppings, wetness, things, Dirt barefaced, dirt stinking, dirt invisible. Whatever it was, she was ready: The rubber kneeler, clanking galvanised bucket, The Lifebuoy, the hard hot water. Let me! we'd say, meaning Hate to see you do this. Too old. Too resentful. Besides, you'll blame us That you had to do it. She never yielded. We couldn't do it right, Lacking her hatred of filth, her fine strong hands. Don't want you to do this, she said. Don't want you to have to. Just remember this: love isn't sex But the dreary things you do for the people you love. And 'Home is the girl's prison, The woman's workhouse,' Not me; Shaw. I do remember. I stand where she knelt. U. A. Fanthorpe 64
High rise flat Up here with binoculars I used to watch small white packets change hands - conjurers, palming. Then they'd piss in coke tins on the footbridge and cool down cyclists. But knives... that's different. So I went to the RSPCA, chose a manky scrap, paws big as lily pads, and fed him up - tinned soup, bacon rind, leftovers from the fridge. To start with he'd wolf the lot, then be sick. I taught him everything. Manners and that; not to lick his balls when I brought birds back. He'd have jumped off the balcony to retrieve the moon if I'd trained him to. Only thing he never got the hang of was the lifts. He liked them Out of Order. Both of them. He sussed that one was for the odd floors (no good to us) but whenever I dived in the other he'd follow all right.
If I slithered out just as the doors shut he'd be trapped like a cockroach in a matchbox; by the time they opened automatically I'd have legged it halfway up to the 12th floor. He'd chase, slathering, straight from hell. Drove him mad. Sometimes I'd press the wrong button, all innocent, and wait. Soon as we arrived he knew something was up, but couldn't tell which way to jump. I'd make a dash, then halt and watch him lollop up or down a flight, stop, wheel round... There were times on the landing when he'd look me in the eye and growl before I'd even made a move. He had other ways of getting me back; streetwise, he'd pull one leg after the other. Gregory Warren Wilson