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Linda Rose Parkes

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The Curator

Yet here I am, gazing through an old window
onto gabled houses with towers and intricate glass
doors cased in iron flowers.
   On the inside, a set of porcelain galleons
you wouldn't remember. One in particular,
redolent of indigo, moss and ochre.
   Next, the bottles carefully labelled.
Item 1: Memory of Conversation
Outside The Cathedral in Winter.
Item 2: Colour of Your Eyes Remembered
on Copse Path through Fronds and Mixed Ferns.
Mixed Juices, Flowering Magnolia. Hands Travelling
between Thigh and Navel: Items 3.4. and 5.
The series: Spats, tied up in muslin,
sprigged with pot pourri.
   But the knowledge of your former heart,
freckles on left breast, bushel of belly,
vagina with its folds of blackness - I stowed
faithfully in silent vats.
   Everyday I walk the great halls,
lyrical, confiding, given over to tears,
sometimes to scorn.
   Of all the treasures in the storehouse,
I don't intend to let go of that galleon.
Clean the rigging, raise the mast, dream of
setting sail one day, in fair winds, for France.

 


Linda Rose Parkes was born in Jersey. She did an M.A. in Creative Writing with Malcolm Bradbury at the University of East Anglia. She has been published regularly in magazines and anthologies. She has lived and worked in Germany, where she performed with songwriters and musicians, but is now back on Jersey where she runs literature and creative writing courses.

 

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