THE HAG VARIATIONS

(NEW POEM, #1 OF SEVERAL)

but there’s nothing more meaningless in this culture than a girl – lara glenum

o, really? the commode and i both know: not everything given is a gift. i have learnt to make withholding wanton. a certain exquisite resistance that ripples the filmy skin of me like heat. picture: the copulating rhythm of the rocker. yes. and yes, the corrugated body, its creases sharp as a war office telegram. the chiropodist kneels before me. his eyes a heady mixture of devotion and reproach. he holds my coyly averted foot as if it were – alternately – an artefact, a relic. balding fool. and i, lean and streaky, yellow as a jawbone, smell of nothing but the dust, his own implacable dread. he does not know: i rose with the pale chicory light, kicked free of my high-waisted briefs – a swimmer’s wriggling kick – yes, it cost me, but o, beneath this floor-length gingham flannelette, i breathe, i breathe. if he knew. the fear flooding into him; blue dye pulled towards his own absorbent core. youth is nude, age is naked. why? the tepid girl who dithers my pills has nothing to say. she is dearie smiles and pink, corrosive earnestness. i wonder about her life. has she ever been razored with want? i doubt it. in the kingdom of the young, desire is an argos catalogue: laminated, itemised. she’s shucking pills like peas, into the clear, clearly-numbered boxes, the ones with the difficult lids. once, i counted grapes into a wine glass. their opaque, puckered skin is like my own. happy new year! said no one, ever. no, i would not like a cup of tea. o, to be the absolute and negative of shame. i let the tension build, tighten the wire in my gut. neighbour. droning on and on, his meat-and-potatoes monotone. hate is a dirty secret, a queasy frisson, a strap-on under the candlewick. yes, mr fix-it, your fingers in my mucky gutter and why not? but i have nothing to leave you: a chest of soiled decorums, coupons, clippings, decencies. anything expired. all day, i let the tension build. i never liked the tedium of yielding. osmotic pool and swoon – release. mine, the stubborn flutter of refusal. until. until. o, to be received without disgust; to fall through myself into the “o” of this beholding – holding. commode, i shall not ascend like a throne, but mount you like a hollow stallion. brazen horse. brazen with the waste of me. the trace of me. not everything given is a gift. except sometimes, when it is.