From Kenny performed at Liars' League 'Hot and Bothered' event 12 July, The Phoenix, 37 Cavendish Square, London. (Listen to it on YouTube, read by actress Jo Widdowson)
.... His protuberant belly shone like burnt plum jam. “Need your gutters cleaning? They looks blocked from ’ere.”
From Resting and Sighing in Between performed by White Rabbit for: 'Are you Sitting Comfortably', 21 June, The Basement, Brighton.
.... In the old days it took two people to bolt an iron globe onto the metal rim at the neck of a diving suit. Poor divers. Pumpkin-headed they sank into the sea with no light, peering out through their tiny portholes. I don’t talk to myself. My self talks to me. It sounds like my mother, who died when I was eight. She was Armenian. You make your father happy being so clever. He used to tell stories about you at dinners crowded with researchers, divers and cameramen - probably still does. Once, nine-year-old-you swam into swarms of jellyfish. Multiply stung you joined them at dinner, everyone exclaiming: You didn’t cry? Heroic little you; praised for such feats as eating chocolate ice-cream in a swell off the Oregon coast that made the other whale-watchers ill.
You need the five languages you speak; including Hebrew, learned for Ariel, your Israeli, marine-archaeologist fiancée. “You are a torch of a girl”, your mother said. She was dying and very sedated and it’s possible she may have meant something different. Ariel’s cagoule is a red trapezium in the foggy light of Wroclaw station. He is the tallest man there and his hair is a black warrior mane. The cafe smells of lemon tea. The visit to his Polish grandmother chastened him though he wasn’t mournful with the family in Tel-Aviv. His breath is spearmint as you embrace him, feeling his lithe ribcage beneath the cagoule. For a second his long arms pliantly hold you and he kisses you. “Be quick,” he says, handing over the washbag. In the toilets a high window lets in a railway metal and snow tang. You shiver, splashing your face. The klaxon of a train reverberates off the tiles. Imagine Ariel on the sleeper, without you! Reunited, you shoulder your rucksack and board the train to Trieste.
The boat is taking on supplies in Trieste docks. “Ariel! Help us load - she can go below!”
In the transparency of a CCTV screen, laden crewmembers swim up the gangplank. We met a year ago. One second before that, I didn’t love Ariel. Yet I must have done because I love him so much now.
A bell clangs, then, an Antipodean shout, Food’s ready! “I’m Kate,” says the Antipodean; greeting me.
They all crowd in. “I’m Nadia,” I shout above the racket.
Professor Ristovic the expedition leader looks like a kindly Vladimir Putin. “I hope your father is well, Nadia - ah! Matthias, meet Nadia,” he says.
“Hi, I’m one of the film crew.” Matthias has fluffy sideburns and eyes like a hedgehog’s that smile in a rosy face.
“So what the hell is Jenni going to do when she has to face her ex-husband?” calls Kate, veiled in steam.
“Press-ups,” jokes Matthias.
“No,” says Ristovic, “yet more reading! What do you think, Nadia?”
“I don’t know her,” I say, (I'm the new girl here).
“Don’t know what?” Ariel appears, squeezing in beside me, grinding pepper onto his food before he has even sat down.
I grip his thigh, dying to hold him. “Can you predict what people will do?” I say.
“No. But everyone thinks they do when they guess right.” Ariel is very logical.
“Well,” I continue, “I haven’t met her yet but everyone thinks Jenni will avoid her ex-husband,” and my tone is flippant like the others.
“I am her ex-husband,” he answers. In this cutlery-silencing moment Ariel’s pasta rises onto his fork making a spindle of spooled spaghetti, bathed in sauce.
“Join us, Jenni!” Ristovic calls, very heartily, as a thin brunette ducks in under the transom.
“I’m charting.” She grabs food; leaves. I see sadness in her long cheeks and angled chin.
All your life, science explains things and makes you happy. Now, in public, you have to go to bed with dread in your guts. The boat has sailed. Jenni the ex-wife, Ariel, refusing your questions, and you; impaled on a harpoon of bad news, have to sail together; sail to a dangerous place in the ocean...
One: an isosceles of road
Two: shadows on a walkway and an iron flagpole; a mizzen mast if this was the aft part of a ketch; I can’t tell you that it is a lamp post.
.... His protuberant belly shone like burnt plum jam. “Need your gutters cleaning? They looks blocked from ’ere.”
Helen; wishing she hadn’t answered the door; struggled to control her gaze. The petunias wilted in the heat, the soil in their pot, grey and cracked. Bloody Kenny. He was practically bare. His tone was peremptory despite the smile on his face. He had been obsequious on previous occasions. What had got into him? Her eyes flicked back to the expiring petunias to avoid seeing how his bulging stomach merged with his meaty pectorals. Chains glinted gold against the dense black chest hair. Why did he have to be so naked? Tattoos decorated his muttony biceps. His cargo shorts and trainers straddled her path. In the July glare, he was like something she had hallucinated; a sperm whale from a pornographic marine burlesque. “When djew last ‘ave ‘em done?” No longer smiling, he fired the question accusingly at her.
“When you did them,” she said, faintly. It was too hot to think.
“Gotta be two years ago,” he said, “two years!”
Helen felt guilty.
“Seein’ as I’m doin’ a job for your neighbour…” he nodded towards Louise’s house, two doors down. He stared at her.
“Oh… um… ” she said, “are you?” Don’t agree.
“Hundred and sixty quid; back and front,” he said. His rubber bullet head swivelled on its mahogany fat-rolls of neck and he emitted a piercing whistle. “Bruce’ll see to it,” he faced her again, his rooster eyes well-fed and watchful.
“I don’t know,” said Helen. Stand up to him. Get rid of him! Why did Kenny always come when her husband was away? It was alarming to think along those lines. She sweated. The avenue baked. Silence.
“Bruce!” bellowed Kenny.
“I have to say that the paint job he did on the windows was …”
“Thass right. Bruce done your upstairs windows,” he said, “I remember now. Last summer.”
“Well he didn’t do it properly I’m afraid,” she was furious at how ineffectual and self-righteous she sounded.
“You never said nothin’ at the time,” accused Kenny. He scowled. “If you adda done praps ee could’ve made a better job of it.”
Fuck! How had she managed to let Kenny be in the right? “Never mind,” she said hastily. “The gutters do need a good clean and…”
But Kenny was not to be put off. “Why dint yew say summink when you ‘ad the chance?” he demanded, stepping forward. Her petunias were suddenly in shade.
“I should have done but I was busy I expect, or not there when he finished or something. It needed two coats but he only did one.” More silence. Stumping towards them under the sycamore trees came Bruce, his customary roll-up clamped in his mouth. He carried the long ladder. Her acceptance had been a foregone conclusion, she realised. The miasma from Kenny’s Lynx was rising around her. “Never mind,” she seethed. Kenny was impassive. Helen was tense. “Hello Bruce,” she greeted the perspiring monkey sidekick, as he arrived.
“Afternoon,” said Bruce. What kind of hold did Kenny have over this elderly, diminutive man that he was able to make him do these difficult tasks? The huge ladder twisted Bruce’s neck and ribcage. His shoulders were hunched.
“Front and back,” said Kenny brusquely to the old man and: “I’ll come by for the money later on,” he told her, and turned on his heel and left. Sweat or maybe suntan oil gleamed on his enormous back....
From Resting and Sighing in Between performed by White Rabbit for: 'Are you Sitting Comfortably', 21 June, The Basement, Brighton..... In the old days it took two people to bolt an iron globe onto the metal rim at the neck of a diving suit. Poor divers. Pumpkin-headed they sank into the sea with no light, peering out through their tiny portholes. I don’t talk to myself. My self talks to me. It sounds like my mother, who died when I was eight. She was Armenian. You make your father happy being so clever. He used to tell stories about you at dinners crowded with researchers, divers and cameramen - probably still does. Once, nine-year-old-you swam into swarms of jellyfish. Multiply stung you joined them at dinner, everyone exclaiming: You didn’t cry? Heroic little you; praised for such feats as eating chocolate ice-cream in a swell off the Oregon coast that made the other whale-watchers ill.
You need the five languages you speak; including Hebrew, learned for Ariel, your Israeli, marine-archaeologist fiancée. “You are a torch of a girl”, your mother said. She was dying and very sedated and it’s possible she may have meant something different. Ariel’s cagoule is a red trapezium in the foggy light of Wroclaw station. He is the tallest man there and his hair is a black warrior mane. The cafe smells of lemon tea. The visit to his Polish grandmother chastened him though he wasn’t mournful with the family in Tel-Aviv. His breath is spearmint as you embrace him, feeling his lithe ribcage beneath the cagoule. For a second his long arms pliantly hold you and he kisses you. “Be quick,” he says, handing over the washbag. In the toilets a high window lets in a railway metal and snow tang. You shiver, splashing your face. The klaxon of a train reverberates off the tiles. Imagine Ariel on the sleeper, without you! Reunited, you shoulder your rucksack and board the train to Trieste.
The boat is taking on supplies in Trieste docks. “Ariel! Help us load - she can go below!”
In the transparency of a CCTV screen, laden crewmembers swim up the gangplank. We met a year ago. One second before that, I didn’t love Ariel. Yet I must have done because I love him so much now.
A bell clangs, then, an Antipodean shout, Food’s ready! “I’m Kate,” says the Antipodean; greeting me.
They all crowd in. “I’m Nadia,” I shout above the racket.
Professor Ristovic the expedition leader looks like a kindly Vladimir Putin. “I hope your father is well, Nadia - ah! Matthias, meet Nadia,” he says.
“Hi, I’m one of the film crew.” Matthias has fluffy sideburns and eyes like a hedgehog’s that smile in a rosy face.
“So what the hell is Jenni going to do when she has to face her ex-husband?” calls Kate, veiled in steam.
“Press-ups,” jokes Matthias.
“No,” says Ristovic, “yet more reading! What do you think, Nadia?”
“I don’t know her,” I say, (I'm the new girl here).
“Don’t know what?” Ariel appears, squeezing in beside me, grinding pepper onto his food before he has even sat down.
I grip his thigh, dying to hold him. “Can you predict what people will do?” I say.
“No. But everyone thinks they do when they guess right.” Ariel is very logical.
“Well,” I continue, “I haven’t met her yet but everyone thinks Jenni will avoid her ex-husband,” and my tone is flippant like the others.
“I am her ex-husband,” he answers. In this cutlery-silencing moment Ariel’s pasta rises onto his fork making a spindle of spooled spaghetti, bathed in sauce.
“Join us, Jenni!” Ristovic calls, very heartily, as a thin brunette ducks in under the transom.
“I’m charting.” She grabs food; leaves. I see sadness in her long cheeks and angled chin.
All your life, science explains things and makes you happy. Now, in public, you have to go to bed with dread in your guts. The boat has sailed. Jenni the ex-wife, Ariel, refusing your questions, and you; impaled on a harpoon of bad news, have to sail together; sail to a dangerous place in the ocean...
********
Change Will Come Jawdance poetry competition hear it on SoundCloud at http://soundcloud.com/frances-clarke/jawdance-competition-entry-for
Three: a brick wall of medium build, clearly an associate, travelling alongside.
Four: spaced behind the wall, a screen of leafless birch and sycamore
Five: some heavy conifers and they, please note, stand in a group; a good place to hide.
Visuals on the trees place them below the line of the wall.
Six: maisonettes beyond the trees. All trigonometry proves that they are at a lower elevation. This suggests that numbers 1 to 3 form a bridge. Double yellow lines confirm.
Seven: Twin tower blocks, Soviet style, bleached by the toneless winter sun.
But it’s that mizzen mast, colleagues.
If that is what it is, we are looking at a ship.
And the fact that it has a bridge merely adds evidence to the claim.
The white sail has torn loose.
Tatters are caught in the sycamores and stream out in skeletal origami horses that swim against the tide and the odds.
The air hums
The sign on the mast says: GREAT CHANGE COMES.
********
from Tentacle, used to illustrate 'Rilla' (right) by artist Nick Andrew, in the 'Land Sea Sky' exhibition Presenting work from the Hampshire County Council Contemporary Art Collection
20 May - 10 July 2011
... Having the tentacle made him conscious of other elements. These thoughts, of another possible existence, were as vestigial as the tentacle. But one day, he had a meeting at the firm's London office. Just outside Winchester, as the train coasted through the meadows, he saw the river Itchen. Instantly he was gripped by longing at the sight of the green watercourse. Within the river he saw floating weed; emerald hair streaming in long tresses. Startled by the intensity of his perception he found he could detect each filament on every strand of serene weed as the gleaming water stretched it out. Its green was calling to him cell by cell so that his body was like an eye. His ability to see became tactile. Then the river vanished as the train hurtled onwards.
He thrust his jaw forward and curled his tongue down. The tentacle was growing inside his mouth. His tongue tip palpated its tapered length. He had begun holding his mouth closed in a subtly altered way so that the tentacle could be accommodated and his tongue be free to caress it.
Attending the meeting in Mark’s narrow office were Mark, glossily be-suited; Toby from IT; Dan, still, as pneumatic as a baby hippo in his corpulent belted trousers; Nils, and himself; Silas Evandrou: divorced, no kids, forty two, dutifully corporate and now longing for the river and plagued by a feeling that slivers of amplitude were shaving off the men and forming sylphs of extra being that were turning about the room like eels. Several aftershaves and the not unpleasant, cumin smell of Dan, added to the atmosphere. There was a whiff of toothpaste. They all talked at once and his mind wandered back to the river… I will stand and let the river offer me the shining sky. It will brim a blue flood at my feet…
“Coffee,” thundered Mark, eventually; “then re-convene in the boardroom for presentations.” They took it in turns to leave the room like passengers crowding the aisle. Remaining seated, Silas curled his tongue down and looped his tentacle to measure its length. Another tentacle had begun to sprout. Into his mind swam the image of a catfish...
********
