3. BIBLE

  I said No not me I didn’t I couldn’t I wouldn’t.

  Can’t remember no idea not in the room.

  Get me a Bible honestly promise you swear.

  I never not in a million years it was him.

  I said Send me a lawyer a vicar a priest.

  Send me a TV crew send me a journalist.

  Can’t remember not in the room. Send me

  a shrink where’s my MP send him to me.

  I said Not fair not right not on not true

  not like that. Didn’t see didn’t know didn’t hear.

  Maybe this maybe that not sure not certain maybe.

  Can’t remember no idea it was him it was him.

  Can’t remember no idea not in the room.

  No idea can’t remember not in the room.

  4. NIGHT

  In the long fifty-year night,

  these are the words that crawl out of the wall:

  Suffer. Monster. Burn in Hell.

  When morning comes,

  I will finally tell.

  Amen.

  5. APPEAL

  If I’d been stoned to death

  If I’d been hung by the neck

  If I’d been shaved and strapped to the Chair

  If an injection

  If my peroxide head on the block

  If my outstretched hands for the chop

  If my tongue torn out at the root

  If from ear to ear my throat

  If a bullet a hammer a knife

  If life means life means life means life

  But what did I do to us all, to myself

  When I was the Devil’s wife?

  Circe

  I’m fond, nereids and nymphs, unlike some, of the pig,

  of the tusker, the snout, the boar and the swine.

  One way or another, all pigs have been mine –

  under my thumb, the bristling, salty skin of their backs,

  in my nostrils here, their yobby, porky colognes.

  I’m familiar with hogs and runts, their percussion of oinks

  and grunts, their squeals. I’ve stood with a pail of swill

  at dusk, at the creaky gate of the sty,

  tasting the sweaty, spicy air, the moon

  like a lemon popped in the mouth of the sky.

  But I want to begin with a recipe from abroad

  which uses the cheek – and the tongue in cheek

  at that. Lay two pig’s cheeks, with the tongue,

  in a dish, and strew it well over with salt

  and cloves. Remember the skills of the tongue –

  to lick, to lap, to loosen, lubricate, to lie

  in the soft pouch of the face – and how each pig’s face

  was uniquely itself, as many handsome as plain,

  the cowardly face, the brave, the comical, noble,

  sly or wise, the cruel, the kind, but all of them,

  nymphs, with those piggy eyes. Season with mace.

  Well-cleaned pig’s ears should be blanched, singed, tossed

  in a pot, boiled, kept hot, scraped, served, garnished

  with thyme. Look at that simmering lug, at that ear,

  did it listen, ever, to you, to your prayers and rhymes,

  to the chimes of your voice, singing and clear? Mash

  the potatoes, nymph, open the beer. Now to the brains,

  to the trotters, shoulders, chops, to the sweetmeats slipped

  from the slit, bulging, vulnerable bag of the balls.

  When the heart of a pig has hardened, dice it small.

  Dice it small. I, too, once knelt on this shining shore

  watching the tall ships sail from the burning sun

  like myths; slipped off my dress to wade,

  breast-deep, in the sea, waving and calling;

  then plunged, then swam on my back, looking up

  as three black ships sighed in the shallow waves.

  Of course, I was younger then. And hoping for men. Now,

  let us baste that sizzling pig on the spit once again.

  Mrs Lazarus

  I had grieved. I had wept for a night and a day

  over my loss, ripped the cloth I was married in

  from my breasts, howled, shrieked, clawed

  at the burial stones till my hands bled, retched

  his name over and over again, dead, dead.

  Gone home. Gutted the place. Slept in a single cot,

  widow, one empty glove, white femur

  in the dust, half. Stuffed dark suits

  into black bags, shuffled in a dead man’s shoes,

  noosed the double knot of a tie round my bare neck,

  gaunt nun in the mirror, touching herself. I learnt

  the Stations of Bereavement, the icon of my face

  in each bleak frame; but all those months

  he was going away from me, dwindling

  to the shrunk size of a snapshot, going,

  going. Till his name was no longer a certain spell

  for his face. The last hair on his head

  floated out from a book. His scent went from the house.

  The will was read. See, he was vanishing

  to the small zero held by the gold of my ring.

  Then he was gone. Then he was legend, language;

  my arm on the arm of the schoolteacher – the shock

  of a man’s strength under the sleeve of his coat –

  along the hedgerows. But I was faithful

  for as long as it took. Until he was memory.

  So I could stand that evening in the field

  in a shawl of fine air, healed, able

  to watch the edge of the moon occur to the sky

  and a hare thump from a hedge; then notice

  the village men running towards me, shouting,

  behind them the women and children, barking dogs,

  and I knew. I knew by the sly light

  on the blacksmith’s face, the shrill eyes

  of the barmaid, the sudden hands bearing me

  into the hot tang of the crowd parting before me.

  He lived. I saw the horror on his face.

  I heard his mother’s crazy song. I breathed

  his stench; my bridegroom in his rotting shroud,

  moist and dishevelled from the grave’s slack chew,

  croaking his cuckold name, disinherited, out of his time.

  Pygmalion’s Bride

  Cold, I was, like snow, like ivory.

  I thought He will not touch me,

  but he did.

  He kissed my stone-cool lips.

  I lay still

  as though I’d died.

  He stayed.

  He thumbed my marbled eyes.

  He spoke –

  blunt endearments, what he’d do and how.

  His words were terrible.

  My ears were sculpture,

  stone-deaf, shells.

  I heard the sea.

  I drowned him out.

  I heard him shout.

  He brought me presents, polished pebbles,

  little bells.

  I didn’t blink,

  was dumb.

  He brought me pearls and necklaces and rings.

  He called them girly things.

  He ran his clammy hands along my limbs.

  I didn’t shrink,

  played statue, shtum.

  He let his fingers sink into my flesh,

  he squeezed, he pressed.

  I would not bruise.

  He looked for marks,

  for purple hearts,

  for inky stars, for smudgy clues.

  His nails were claws.

  I showed no scratch, no scrape, no scar.

  He propped me up on pillows,

  jawed all night.

  My heart was ice, was glass.

  His voice was gravel, hoarse.

  He talked white black.

  So I changed tack,

  grew warm, like candle wax,

  kissed back,

  was soft, was pliable,

  began to moan,

  got hot, got wild,

  arched, coiled, writhed,

  begged for his child,

  and at the climax

  screamed my head off –

  all an act.

  And haven’t seen him since.

  Simple as that.

  Mrs Rip Van Winkle

  I sank like a stone

  into the still, deep waters of late middle age,

  aching from head to foot.

  I took up food

  and gave up exercise.

  It did me good.

  And while he slept

  I found some hobbies for myself.

  Painting. Seeing the sights I’d always dreamed about:

  The Leaning Tower.

  The Pyramids. The Taj Mahal.

  I made a little watercolour of them all.

  But what was best,

  what hands-down beat the rest,

  was saying a none-too-fond farewell to sex.

  Until the day

  I came home with this pastel of Niagara

  and he was sitting up in bed rattling Viagra.

  Mrs Icarus

  I’m not the first or the last

  to stand on a hillock,

  watching the man she married

  prove to the world

  he’s a total, utter, absolute, Grade A pillock.

  Frau Freud

  Ladies, for argument’s sake, let us say

  that I’ve seen my fair share of ding-a-ling, member and jock,

  of todger and nudger and percy and cock, of tackle,

  of three-for-a-bob, of willy and winky; in fact,

  you could say, I’m as au fait with Hunt-the-Salami

  as Ms M. Lewinsky – equally sick up to here

  with the beef bayonet, the pork sword, the saveloy,

  love-muscle, night-crawler, dong, the dick, prick,

  dipstick and wick, the rammer, the slammer, the rupert,

  the shlong. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve no axe to grind

  with the snake in the trousers, the wife’s best friend,

  the weapon, the python – I suppose what I mean is,

  ladies, dear ladies, the average penis – not pretty . . .

  the squint of its envious solitary eye . . . one’s feeling of pity . . .

  Salome

  I’d done it before

  (and doubtless I’ll do it again,

  sooner or later)

  woke up with a head on the pillow beside me – whose? –

  what did it matter?

  Good-looking, of course, dark hair, rather matted;

  the reddish beard several shades lighter;

  with very deep lines round the eyes,

  from pain, I’d guess, maybe laughter;

  and a beautiful crimson mouth that obviously knew

  how to flatter . . .

  which I kissed . . .

  Colder than pewter.

  Strange. What was his name? Peter?

  Simon? Andrew? John? I knew I’d feel better

  for tea, dry toast, no butter,

  so rang for the maid.

  And, indeed, her innocent clatter

  of cups and plates,

  her clearing of clutter,

  her regional patter,

  were just what I needed –

  hungover and wrecked as I was from a night on the batter.

  Never again!

  I needed to clean up my act,

  get fitter,

  cut out the booze and the fags and the sex.

  Yes. And as for the latter,

  it was time to turf out the blighter,

  the beater or biter,

  who’d come like a lamb to the slaughter

  to Salome’s bed.

  In the mirror, I saw my eyes glitter.

  I flung back the sticky red sheets,

  and there, like I said – and ain’t life a bitch –

  was his head on a platter.

  Eurydice

  Girls, I was dead and down

  in the Underworld, a shade,

  a shadow of my former self, nowhen.

  It was a place where language stopped,

  a black full stop, a black hole

  where words had to come to an end.

  And end they did there,

  last words,

  famous or not.

  It suited me down to the ground.

  So imagine me there,

  unavailable,

  out of this world,

  then picture my face in that place

  of Eternal Repose,

  in the one place you’d think a girl would be safe

  from the kind of a man

  who follows her round

  writing poems,

  hovers about

  while she reads them,

  calls her His Muse,

  and once sulked for a night and a day

  because she remarked on his weakness for abstract nouns.

  Just picture my face

  when I heard –

  Ye Gods –

  a familiar knock-knock-knock at Death’s door.

  Him.

  Big O.

  Larger than life.

  With his lyre

  and a poem to pitch, with me as the prize.

  Things were different back then.

  For the men, verse-wise,

  Big O was the boy. Legendary.

  The blurb on the back of his books claimed

  that animals,

  aardvark to zebra,

  flocked to his side when he sang,

  fish leapt in their shoals

  at the sound of his voice,

  even the mute, sullen stones at his feet

  wept wee, silver tears.

  Bollocks. (I’d done all the typing myself,

  I should know.)

  And given my time all over again,

  rest assured that I’d rather speak for myself

  than be Dearest, Beloved, Dark Lady, White Goddess, etc., etc.

  In fact, girls, I’d rather be dead.

  But the Gods are like publishers,

  usually male,

  and what you doubtless know of my tale

  is the deal.

  Orpheus strutted his stuff.

  The bloodless ghosts were in tears.

  Sisyphus sat on his rock for the first time in years.

  Tantalus was permitted a couple of beers.

  The woman in question could scarcely believe her ears.

  Like it or not,

  I must follow him back to our life –

  Eurydice, Orpheus’ wife –

  to be trapped in his images, metaphors, similes,

  octaves and sextets, quatrains and couplets,

  elegies, limericks, villanelles,

  histories, myths . . .

  He’d been told that he mustn’t look back

  or turn round,

  but walk steadily upwards,

  myself right behind him,

  out of the Underworld

  into the upper air that for me was the past.

  He’d been warned

  that one look would lose me

  for ever and ever.

  So we walked, we walked.

  Nobody talked.

  Girls, forget what you’ve read.

  It happened like this –

  I did everything in my power

  to make him look back.

  What did I have to do, I said,

  to make him see we were through?

  I was dead. Deceased.

  I was Resting in Peace. Passé. Late.

  Past my sell-by date . . .

  I stretched out my hand

  to touch him once

  on the back of his neck.

  Please let me stay.

  But already the light had saddened from purple to grey.

  It was an uphill schlep

  from death to life

  and with every step

  I willed him to turn.

  I was thinking of filching the poem

  out of his cloak,

  when inspiration finally struck.

  I stopped, thrilled.

  He was a yard in front.

  My voice shook when I spoke –

  Orpheus, your poem’s a masterpiece.

  I’d love to hear it again . . .

  He was smiling modestly

  when he turned,

  when he turned and he looked at me.

  What else?

  I noticed he hadn’t shaved.

  I waved once and was gone.

  The dead are so talented.

  The living walk by the edge of a vast lake

  near the wise, drowned silence of the dead.

  The Kray Sisters

  There go the twins! geezers would say

  when we walked down the frog and toad

  in our Savile Row whistle and flutes, tailored

  to flatter our thr’penny bits, which were big,

  like our East End hearts. No one could tell us apart,

  except when one twin wore glasses or shades

  over two of our four mince pies. Oh, London,

  London, London Town, made for a girl and her double

  to swagger around; or be driven at speed

  in the back of an Austin Princess, black,

  up West to a club; to order up bubbly, the best,

  in a bucket of ice. Garland singing that night. Nice.

  Childhood. When we were God Forbids, we lived

  with our grandmother – God Rest Her Soul – a tough suffragette

  who’d knocked out a Grand National horse, name of

  Ballytown Boy, with one punch, in front of the King,

  for the cause. She was known round our manor thereafter

  as Cannonball Vi. By the time we were six,

  we were sat at her skirts, inhaling the juniper fumes

  of her Vera Lynn; hearing the stories of Emmeline’s Army

  before and after the ’14 war. Diamond ladies,

  they were, those birds who fought for the Vote, salt

  of the earth. And maybe this marked us for ever,

  because of the loss of our mother, who died giving birth

  to the pair of unusual us. Straight up, we knew,

  even then, what we wanted to be; had, you could say,

  a vocation. We wanted respect for the way

  we entered a bar, or handled a car, or shrivelled

  a hard-on with simply a menacing look, a threatening word

  in a hairy ear, a knee in the orchestra stalls. Belles

  of the balls. Queens of the Smoke. We dreamed it all,

  trudging for miles, holding the hand of the past, learning

  the map of the city under our feet; clocking the boozers,

 

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