Take off your bracelet
You are neither
mother nor wife,
daughter nor painter
Just the ripened blood
I first knew
too long ago
through knowing sidlings
under stifled, restless sheets
where we waited —
weary as a moan —
for the sun to die
Knead yourself
through my fingers
You have no language
no accent
no favourite dress
As timeless as the tattoos
that dip and unfold
down the curve of your back
in its hungering sheen
Foster Care
Downstairs
she sits, alone
with her barren womb
and warm tea,
taking nearly an hour
to sew on a button.
Her muffled yearning
rises through the floorboards
overwhelming
his lightless room.
Lying awake
in a borrowed world,
he thumbs his ears
to the point of bruising
and whispers,
and whispers:
a Prayer of Thanks,
the two times table —
anything
to drown out the song
she could never sing,
screaming from his gut.
Poet Simon Freedman was born in Malta but has lived in the UK since 1996. He has been published in a wide variety of magazines including The Delinquent, Read This, Gloom Cupboard,The Recusant and South Bank Poetry (forthcoming) and is a regular at Poetry Unplugged in Covent Garden, London. Many of his poems are available for your reading pleasure at http://www.simonfreedman.co.uk.
