My Virginia Woolf in disguise –
My veil, my apprentice, shaman, owl wise.

I see Jean Rhys’s ghost in-intervals.
Joyce Carol Oates’s hands, and rouge.

Rapture. Oh, rapture.
There was Plath’s lipstick.

The milk, the buttered bread, Ariel.
Gas. Gas. Gas and stamps.

Updike’s father’s tears.
A child’s eyes can see the worm.

Daddy’s painted drum.
Let the dishes rot-into-nothing.

Hemingway’s earth does not waste-anything-in-the-end.
The cornfields of Illinois are pretty

Where David Foster Wallace
Grew up. His childhood

Was made up of bonfire anecdotes
Shark teeth and infinite jest

He was the pale king sitting on an earth-throne
The so-called psychotic bewitched by libraries

By the halls of Amherst the Midwest where of-all-things
Genocide took place. Murder and speeches

His dream songs. They came from space
He gripped his pen. Left behind an alphabet of supernova writing

There were monsters hiding in the closet
Monsters under the bed. The room is smaller

Than he remembers when he returns home
From Amherst water and lobsters pouring out of him

As he evaporates. America offers shelter for some
Meat and potatoes kind of women and men

Worms, holes, the dark, maniacs
Hooks already programming him.

Addiction to neon –
Sumptuous marriage. Playful.
Montage of ill health.

Now what does that all mean.
Let us take the word ‘neon’.
It can mean stripes of light.
Hallucinogenic Technicolor.

‘Sumptuous’. Does that mean
That we are sitting down to a feast.
Us gulls to fill our bellies?
Fatten them up with tiny golden

Arrows of haiku’d up words
And sumptuousness. And now
We come to marriage and playful.
Let us go skinny-dipping in them.

Let us not let ill health
Keep us back. Our bones are
Ancient. Everything lovely
About it. Out there are our

Doppelgangers reminding us
Nothing is by accident. They
Tell us to sit down at our desk
Writer, poet and to make a living

Out of it. In time we will
All fade away like squiggles
Of moonlight and my brother’s
Laughter is explicit. It fans

Itself into waves –
I have been here before. A-fri-ca!
I still burn for him.

Yearn for him like a plague
Yearns for famine. Those lean years.
He feels nothing for me.
I am a useless zero. An empty cup.

So I have haiku’d life away.
Worn this chip on my shoulder
I am a distillate. Mere fog.
Now I play at writing maps.

In this story there are two sisters.
One is a case study being held under observation.
Her day starts with pharmaceuticals, on pins and needles.
Good morning. Tell me. Confess this.
You said last week you would make the effort.
Set the wheel in motion. Release all the silver
Linings of the clouds of your surface tension.
Tell me the words you would like to hear.
Make yourself happy. It’s a sin not to try.
Blue is the sky. Blue is the swimming pool.
Blue are the building blocks, paint, and the box of rye
Toasted crackers, the earthenware, the plates,
And my high school swimming costume
With the white stripes that I changed into in
The school bathroom. Lap after lap. I felt lucky.
I use blue crayons to draw vowels and consonants.
I’m chained to them. Built a home for them

Mapped out inside my mind’s eye’s atlas.
I want the beauty, the purity, the suicidal illness
Of innocence, the pleasure of English literature
And the wuthering heights of it. I fell for you
Because there was something about a paradise
About you. Something exotic like an avocado
In a suitcase in Sylvia Plath’s iconic bell jar, like
An American who puts on a fur coat before
She turns the key in the ignition and fills her lungs
And head with carbon monoxide. I am a Romantic.
The war poets dead and buried. They never
Completely recovered from the war. Slaves every one.
In the end aren’t we all slaves, take the housewife
For example, the poet or the Romantics?
The other sister is bored with life. She has so much
Money she doesn’t know what to do with it.
So she gets a visa and goes to America, Thailand, and India.
She never has to phone collect from overseas.

When I look up at the night sky I know
There are stars, the moon, the Milky Way.
Perhaps Milton is looking down at me a father-figure.
Inspiring me like Rainer Maria Rilke or Goethe.
As they stretched their arms outwards
Toward imagination so do I. Imagination
And the ‘voice’ can be complicated, complex,
And psychological, and I’ve learned so can I.

In childhood, my father loved his meat and potatoes.
Once there were towers. Towers of the radiant sun.

Thrones of them. My sister is queen. My brother king.
Curbing anything oceanic. The stalks that grow from

This world are like any green feast. They are perfectly
In rhythm with the sleepless sea, that mocks me. I have

Found so many people now that worship my fear
For them. I anchor myself in the closet behind winter

Dresses I will never wear. Protection needs order,
Routine and gravity. Norms and values. It is not easy

To sway from the blue of the sky to where East meets west.
The Oriental girl with her matchstick legs gives me

My cookie to appease some sinful nature that I have
Forgotten even exists. I am the scapegoat, the lamb, the

Unmarried woman, the insomniac, the nurse, the confidante,
The keeper of secrets. I answer the telephone. Wait until

It rings three times before I pick up waiting to hear
His voice but you see it is complicated. Great men are

Often complex. Relationships with great men are often
Complicated. How I long for the sea’s body to cover my

Own. The weight of water. It is fire. How it burns. How
It sates my skin. It goes down like a single malt whisky.

I am in Ward 7 again. Tara. Walls closing in. Evaporating.
Becoming fainter and fainter. Fading away. Bars at the

Window. People indifferent to me. Nurses aloof. Angelic
Creatures who are in possession of night medication.

I take those pharmaceuticals. I drown in them. An empty
Vessel or royalty. I fly home. Onwards towards the light.

Sweet Jesus. A cave of flesh. The birthday girl with her
Twenty-one candles. The pastor strums his guitar. We all

Sing hymns. Later we eat cake like there is no tomorrow.
Later he plays the piano. Much later, years I turn thirty.

The rural countryside
Has its own welcoming committee.
It has its own encyclopedia.
It has its own dictionary.
Every year I throw a parade
In my honor. Why not?
Why is family always hurting family?
Describing matters in the system.

Do they not have anything better to do?
Like make love, instead of war.
Stories about family life
Will mature you in old fashioned ways.
Sickness depends on culture.
Maturity depends on your mother.
Great poems are meant for the dark.
For night swimmers. For viewpoints.

Rape is found there.
At the end of the world.
The halo of the laughing carcass.
Ghost stories and erosion.
Birthday girls and photographs.
The dodo bird and the rhino’s horn.
Excuse my blood, my church hat.
While I visit the museum.

Fragments of summer
Ravenous village of stone –
Sadness is wasted in youth
A wilderness history of it
We are on a path walking
To meet each other on a road –
A road filled with studies
I have a wounded body

So we meet in a rural forest
Or on that sunny road –
You have a wounded body
I was scared of that vision
In all of its sacred glory
We are lovers of the Arctic Circle
If it still exists. We were family.
We were sons, and daughters
Before we were poetry.

I have no children
and I wonder why that is so
I also wonder if I ever
was built for that –
built like the machine
my own mother was
that fit in the otherworldly
groove of my father
that otherworldly groove
made of secret things
that filled my heart with ice.

I needed to know he did
not see me but he saw
a dream or really a vision
of a bride at twenty-five
like my mother the pageant queen
was in her wedding lace –
dad lost a glove between
the church and the main hall
in all the photographs
that was taken in the gardens
he is wearing one glove.

These glaciers have eyes,
the nape of a babe’s neck,
placenta, a patella, a personality –
we have given them trees,
numbers and a womb ceremony
left ice trailing in their wake.
The coelacanth knows
these waters – they winter
here every year and they
know what the meaning
of what a portrait of a still life is.

You mimic a comet
while your arms stretch out
like chords searching for
the harmonic details of God
the innerness of wilderness
the giddiness found in nature
therein you have decided
lies history – the world
and knowledge of a child –
you milk its worth
its life and freshness.