Sally Festing
Skin to skin
Girl with Fox: Gaugin, 1990-1
'Caterwaul. Hiss' my New York diaries read.
'Outside the window, in the Merz's yard,
the resident tabby, front leg taut,
claws a visiting black and white.
Both are motionless for what seems an age.'
(Blink if you're all right.) This,
and the air conditioner's purr begin the day.
But next, it's hounds I notice, making for the MMA.
One oldy with a plastic guard around its bite,
the way a florist sells bouquets,
others squash-nosed, primped and petted.
Women carry them in handbags on the subway
my daughter posits.
Cosset them like you play with words.
In the gallery, silver-framed,
the same unblinking stares, same stretching limb.
Girl with Fox lies on a black anemone of hair,
one paw on her breast, not pelt to pelt but skin to skin.
Fox fades into its surroundings, captures
the uncapturable world I'm trying to fix,
with a copulating stink on the conditioned air.
Sally Festing’s verse play, The Donor’s Daughter, will be on Radio 4 in April. In May she reads at the Poetry Festival, Wells-next-the-Sea.
Page(s) 27
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