A few samples from Mothering Under, Guinevere's new evolving poetry collection which covers the cataclysmic to the joyous on: birth, motherhood, relationships and sexuality, set along the Southand West Wales coast.
Scroll down for samples from Fresh Fruit & Screams - (2006) Bluechrome Press.
Mothering Under : poetry samples
from Guinevere's new unpublished collection
I had a Baby
Turned into a foetus,
folding up my legs
to the sulk of my bulk,
the slow mend
of red muscle.
Nothing to say
from these thinned teeth,
gaps in bone
on that funereal drive home.
Unslept. Undressed,
kicking through the rift
to the hard flesh of you,
my lover,
elbowed from this kiss.
Window Cleaner
He didn’t take off his boots,
just trod softly - as if the mud wouldn’t loosen.
All he cared about was the sky -
waving at it until it rushed into every room.
He knew every cloud pattern, spire cross
valley slit and fire pit of Swansea.
Nose and finger prints, dog licks, mildew,
drips - he’d massage them off the glass
closing in and in on perfection with his green
and greener eyes each time -
like his windows they could not be more clear.
I don’t even know the colour of his hair,
only see the fractals in his eyes.
I should let the view sink into me too.
Instead I pace, mutter jobs, follow the dog,
as though to share this space,
stand by his clean, silent gaze
would be just two halves too powerful.
All corners saluted to, he leaves
with a few small warnings -
the coming of hail, a leak in the leading.
The air smells cut, a different breeze.
Even the mirrors dream,
calling the tides.
The night drums
with a wind wrapped sea,
traffic, electricity.
I tie back my curtains, uncover
the moon’s tilt - like a lover
sent back to my side.
First Steps in Fishguard
Your arms outstretch.
The world is a tight-rope.
Gulls lodge in the rocks to watch.
We are in the highest street, hiding
from the sun. The horizon domes
through our lungs; the last breaths
of one phase, prepare to pass.
Your eyes lock on my face.
I am the target – low, alluring,
a nursery rhyme moon.
I beckon you
in the silver-spun
dust of this rented room.
Your blood judders. Muscles
just hold you up, incongruous.
Still, pausing
on the edge of the Persian rug,
the cottage gate grinning.
Then, a launch – electric,
scuttling like prey
into that safe collapse, the clasp
of my limbs, my lap,
the jigsaw of us, more in love –
the more we are alone in this,
twisted together like addicts.
Poet
You hold the grit of my days:
skin traces, cookie crumbs,
traces, leaves and seeds –
fixed in your slackening spine,
gliding around in the bags of my life.
Your perfect alphabet –
hot under my armpits,
lugged into supermarkets, toilets,
trains, beaches, splayed wide.
What words did you hear, search,
what made your wrists twitch
as you scribbled into the sense of it.
I wonder how you get to the point
of each line. If your words
are hung up in libraries,
trains or lost in transcripts, pillowslips.
Are you lolled in bed or
perched at a desk,
arguing with your mind.
Or summoning freely, fingers
rippled with spirit.
Do you rip open the night
to write, have a way to process
all that is: corroded,
loved, lost, plain, pervasive.
I fold back your corners,
pressing petals.
Flick for more, relish
your scent in lulls
of time, throw you to the floor!
Another bruise, back veining.
Resident resonance,
tea stained, romantic poet.
Indestructible heart.
Slide with me into the next
verse of this irked
and epiphanous world.
From Fresh Fruit & Screams
(2006) Bluechrome Press
Bats
Oh lover!
We
have
hung
like
bats
onto
the
bad
times
for
too
long
now.
Let's spread our toes a while .
'Put Me into Words,' Screams the Cherry Blossom
If only I could.
Let me engulf you
by you engulfing me.
Let down your fresh,
white hands,
maul me.
Unearth your seeds,
seat them on my pleated navel.
Loosen your roots,
stick that waxy reach
in my path.
I can trip into your lifted trunk,
burst out
with wise old swirls,
spinning in spring's tow,
with my green hair
unfastening its shapes
and my trussed thorax peeling.
Our arms will sift light
through petal nests.
Fingers will buzz
with roused bees
saving our sap
for the sweet retreat.
Words Cherry Blossom!
Give me all of your words.
Or do we need
a bigger gash to fall in?
Some cavern
into the brains of life,
where majesty sits,
all records were writ.
Wired
The wires have bred
and spread like ivy.
There's a little machine
in everything.
It's a digital quest,
a strange test.
You may lose your head,
perhaps you want to.
It's as fascinating
as Mercury.
It's space playing hard to get.
It's virtual like asepsis.
It's the sloth of accomplishment,
a fat money pot,
million dollar deals, despot.
It replicates
like a lizard's tail,a signature.
It's a prime player
under this grainy sky
as the pixels part
and the dreamscapes start.
.
Ocean Bed
It is dark-o-clock.
The perimeter is mapped with stars.
Incarnation-
your shape sparkles through the sky.
Down here, I am the sea,
the sea that smelts through me.
I am the green hair of mermaids,
whelked nipples
that harden to your face.
I am a pearl in the mouth
and I can vomit up a beach,
as the seaweed wraps
her warted arms around me.
I am holy
from the world bath,
shaven
from the grazing shark
that tracks.
Like a boat,
I am time-tabled into this space-
a definite vessel.
Yet,
I guard my eyes with a mirror.
I let the waves create,
find the way by mistake.
I keep myself guessing,
staving off the whispers
from the she who is me.
And now, my daughter,
a cell or two old,
it is light-o-clock
and you can see
from your balcony,
the studs of silver horns,
the eyes of fish,
crabs, claws,
more than I could ever imagine.
Onion Girl
She shall yield.
She shall unfold.
The Onion Girl,
woken by air
and a frightening knife.
She will dry up and be used
in some peculiar dish.
Middle Ground
You sleep bedide me
like a baby.
I am the placenta.
The Fling
I was going to write,
I love you!
I'm so glad my pen ran out.