though nothing’s been done, nothing that should have been –

the takings not counted and locked in the safe,

the tables still sticky with rings.

Tomorrow they croon

like the daughter who’ll always come later

Tomorrow promises the wind across the river

Tomorrow sing the creaking wings.

News

After all this time I’m still trying

to appear to you –

it’s harder than you think,

requires a furious concentration:

like the apple you lift to your lips without looking

I’ve taken infinite pains to be here.

Once there was something I had to tell you –

the city we might flee to, or the name of a child,

words that could hinge our lives

like a breastbone its wings.

Even now when you ask

and I say Nothing

what I mean is white flesh, a shining skin:

that we must leave all we own this instant

as if the foretold enemy were coming –

our back door flung open hard against the brick,

the radio in the deserted kitchen

still blaring the news.

Enola Gay

She could be anybody’s mother

pegging out the washing on a hot August morning,

lifting a sheet’s saintly dazzle to the line.

The day stretches in front of her stainlessly:

her hands keep her busy, fluttering through each room

until all the windows are blinding.

She irons away the long afternoon,

pressing summer dresses thin as her own skin,

her face blurred by the clouds of steam.

Evening and his bedtime comes around again –

she used to kiss him, then tell him

to Blow out the light!

She crosses herself before falling asleep –

all night she flies for mile after starless mile

over fields of white linen.

Shifting

Once a week she feels the urge like a headache

to shift all the furniture around,

filling the house with a sound like thunder –

the red sofa lugged under the window,

the TV next to the fireplace,

the rug lengthways against the opposite wall.

It’s like a Christmas cracker puzzle without a solution –

the rug this time dragged into the middle, not touching,

the TV angled towards the window,

the sofa against the wall with the radiator

that still (mental note) needs bleeding.

But there’s always something that doesn’t ft

something left over –

the bookcase with its shelves of green murder,

a spider plant consigned to a corner without enough light.

What doesn’t change is the room, or the furniture,

only the permutations she has to work with

which may include, one of these fine days,

the TV, the bookcase, the spider plant,

the rug rolled up with its map of stains

all piled high on the badly clawed sofa,

itself shoved hard against the front door

on the other side of which a daughter,

home early from school, is pushing, pushing.

Five Easy Pieces

Of course we’re on the side of the girl,

the poor, pretty, pig-ignorant and pregnant blonde