Oxygen
When at last the door sprang open –
what I saw was an apparition on a leash.
You had to catch your breath before embracing me.
Then I entered your tiny cluttered flat,
squeezing through a narrow path
to reach your small table. You – purse-lipped,
a hand fluttering on your heart
as if to stop it escaping,
the tubes in your nostrils, the long thin
lead which soon I'd trace
to its source – an oxygen recycling machine.
You gasped "Wait! Wait!"
I stumbled to describe my life,
you concentrated on breathing less painfully.
And when you were tired, turned the huge TV behind me
up, and looked past me at the news.
Then you slipped into bed and closed your eyes,
your back turned to me – my skeletal father.
I looked at the mustard jar half full of gold phlegm.
The oxygen machine chugged and hummed,
its rhythm shaking the floor like a ship's engine.
It rose through the soles of my feet, through the table,
into my palms and elbows, through the chair legs
into the seat and my sex –
that surge and hiss, pump and release,
speaking to me through the core of my bones.
The machine that drives the lost world
where I'm still waiting, even now. As long
as I can remember that sound
with every fibre of my body, you are still breathing.
what I saw was an apparition on a leash.
You had to catch your breath before embracing me.
Then I entered your tiny cluttered flat,
squeezing through a narrow path
to reach your small table. You – purse-lipped,
a hand fluttering on your heart
as if to stop it escaping,
the tubes in your nostrils, the long thin
lead which soon I'd trace
to its source – an oxygen recycling machine.
You gasped "Wait! Wait!"
I stumbled to describe my life,
you concentrated on breathing less painfully.
And when you were tired, turned the huge TV behind me
up, and looked past me at the news.
Then you slipped into bed and closed your eyes,
your back turned to me – my skeletal father.
I looked at the mustard jar half full of gold phlegm.
The oxygen machine chugged and hummed,
its rhythm shaking the floor like a ship's engine.
It rose through the soles of my feet, through the table,
into my palms and elbows, through the chair legs
into the seat and my sex –
that surge and hiss, pump and release,
speaking to me through the core of my bones.
The machine that drives the lost world
where I'm still waiting, even now. As long
as I can remember that sound
with every fibre of my body, you are still breathing.
Pascale Petit's second collection, The Zoo Father (Seren 2001), is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize. Her third collection, The Huntress, will appear later this year.
Page(s) 11
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