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Poetry Library Southbank Centre - The Poetry Library housing the Arts Council Collection at Southbank Centre

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Emma-Jane Arkady

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Endeavour

Mother was all dinner lady and Raleigh shopper,
scatty delight on a Friday bringing cod and surprise from the market:
a puzzle, boxed in flaming colour,
Britannic pennants on a fluming sea, polychromatic
to the sludge inside,
a thousand intractable pieces
run together on brown injection strips
numbered through twenty to poop ten
to the missing of the mizzen stay hatch cover,
spread fragments on the drive, chaos in the heat of July
founding my expedition through the long break.

I was Captain Kirk and next door's kid sister, Uhura.
We sailed her all summer till the rains and new term,
when Mother, suddenly gripped by a visit from the Taylors,
berthed her on the mantle piece, ordnance
to cross their bows with my brilliance.

In the half-term we played pirates,
between thunder, set her in the lawn surrounded by frigates,
loosed canon and torched her with Bryant and May,
red heads placed to explode in the captain's bed
flaming the plastic with an acrid pleasure;
and as she dwindled to a candle stub,
arrowed her from shore with the Christmas bow,
fragmenting her last stay, cartwheeled into the waney lap;
cruel childhood dripping brown into the weave.

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