Baggage
In the square
is a giant tree
hung with lights.
Through the branches
a blood moon
has come
and gone,
and now
a chain smoking
player rasps
a wonderful song.
The man next to me
has teeth
dark with wine.
It is about a man
who leaves
his suitcase
in a cupboard,
he says.
Under the tree
an English girl
is weeping,
she has anxieties,
while a step away
a man is
slapping a child
hard on the thigh.
Usually
says my friend
emptying
the bottle,
they are about love.
The Nature of Art
Art was always a thing in our house
or artiness: we were thought of
as bohemians,
had the qualifications:
poverty, scandal, a frisson of madness.
My father, stuck in rage and guilt
wrote a short story about a soldier
in a desert stuck in rage and guilt
and painted birds that could not fly.
My sister drew a landscape
she walked into.
I wrote a poem about snow
that never fell, filled gaps like that
with empty words.
My mother tore a photograph
of the MV Columba from a brochure
or the People’s Friend ,
stuck it on the wall,
with sellotape that yellowed
as the years passed,
wished she was there.
