Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

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

« Previous item
Contents of this issue
Next item »

Elizabeth Bartlett

print this page

Secondaries

Tertullian, like Barth, took his stand on the only ground where he could: the flesh is man. ‘All of him is flesh and by nature ought to perish’, Barth roundly wrote, in his pleasant Die Christliche Lehre nach dem Heidelberger Katechismus - John Updike.


You are like the lover who remembers
to call back after the affair is over.
You own me, and you know my body well,
each little anatomical detail, and not only
the skin, but the channels and runnels
the lymph glands and the stalks of polyps.

I sit on the edge of the bed, raging,
biting my lip, bawling like a child.
You are so like my father, wanting
my hair to fall out to curb my vanity,
sickness to cure my greed, uncertainty
to jolt me out of habit and routine,
something to demonstrate the subtle arts
of battle, trench warfare, a waiting game.

I wear my striped pants like any puny
death-camp inmate and read the new Updike
in the waiting-room.  Sod you, I think,
I never thought you’d come back for me.

You are my enemy and I will not let you
own me;  my father, and I will not let you
call me daughter. If you are any kind
of lover take your chilly hands off me
and watch me joking with the doctor,
even though we are both old hands at this;
his by-pass surgery this time last year,
my bloody little seeding heads crossing
the borders we erected, stealthy invaders.
Get out the tumbleweed, I say.  He laughs.

Page(s) 8-9

Back to top