And Then the Young

Dust hangs in the air like bad news; a plague of heat
fries lilies in a vase. Breathe & raise a threat of breathlessness.
 
Impossible to settle. Impossible to know what to do
with yourself. Sit down, pick up a book. Walk to the window
& gaze outside. Field without features, unpeopled track.
One cow, dead or asleep. One anonymous bird on a shrub.
 
And then the young come tumbling through the door, drunk on summer, laughing at nothing, singing out your name.

        Frank
In that very southern university,
we were northern aliens, experiments
in academia, mad in love with literature,                       
first in the family to win a place.
 
Winter or summer, he shrugged thin arms
into a khaki parka. His hooked nose poked
from a face pale as bleached flour. He kissed me
once, in Anglo-Saxon, rough and slobbery.
 
Frank couldn’t do with borrowed thought.
When he spat words straight from the seam,
hard and black, his tutors’ eyes lit up.
He didn’t give a toss if they agreed or not.
 
Analysing Hamlet (he’s fucking fucked),
evaluating Wordsworth (that bloke wins first prize
fer turning kids off poetry), rattling off his own
deranged and genius critique of Hemingway,
 
he gobbed and scrawled himself a First.
The last I heard, he’d won a scholarship,
soared off to be Frank in New York, while I
wondered what it meant to graduate.
 
What I’m thinking now, too late, is this:
I could have learned a lot from Frank.

from Frank (Smith Doorstop 2021)

The following poem, Island Leaving, is a ballad - not my usual style - based on the story of my grandmother's four brothers leaving her and their sister at home on the Isle of Man while they left to try and find work in Canada.
Ballad: Island Leaving
 The sun was at its jauntiest
that second day of May
when all my brothers took to sea
and the carrier sailed away.
 
But rain was in my marrowbone
and rain was in my eyes
when to the land of herring gulls
they tossed their brief goodbyes.
 
The sun was at its merriest
as the steamer left the quay
for a country seven days away,
a land I’d never see.
 
And the fog was at my shoulder
and the fog was in my head,
for ‘You must stay and we must leave,’
is what my brothers said.
 
‘You must stay and tend the fire
and nurse our mother dear
and we will look for labour
a thousand miles from here.
 
And you must stay and pluck the fowl
and you must bake the bread
and you must wash the cotton sheets
to make our mother’s bed.
 
And we will make our fortunes
and hope to find a wife.
This island doesn’t need us now.
We’ll start another life.’
 
But the cold was in my bosom
and the cold was on my skin
to think they would abandon me,
their closest, kindest kin.
 
And rain was in my gullet
and rain was in my blood,
for all the men I’d loved the most,
they left me where I stood.
 
And all the men I’d loved the most
refused to understand
a woman wants to know the world
as much as any man.
 
And all the brothers that I lost
would die before they’d see
that a narrow life of duty
isn’t any life for me.
 
 This poem has been set to music by the very talented Kimwei McCarthy. You can hear my introduction and Kimwei singing Island Leaving here

Through the Letterbox
 
Mum and I are halfway down the stairs,
by the little window, when we see him.
Mr Carmichael.
 
In that neighbourhood of nets
and tonsured lawns,
the men away at work all day,
each woman shut in her own small coop,
any bore or wide boy could just
turn up and it was Open Sesame.
 
She freezes, mouths to me, Shhh. Sit down.
We crouch, quiet as the gnomes
round next door’s pond,
while he knocks and knocks and knocks.
 
I never liked Mr Carmichael,
who seemed to be made from
pale grey plasticine and stretched too much.
His fingers fluttered. He oozed words
and always stayed too long.
 
I kept thinking, she said later, half-stifling a laugh,
all he’s got to do is look through the letterbox
and he’ll see us sitting here. Twinkling, she was,
as if she couldn’t believe what she’d done.
Proud, I think now, of her quiet refusal
to be a woman trapped, through politeness,
by a man rapping on her door with his fist.

Through the Letterbox features in the Rialto https://www.therialto.co.uk/pages/  

I Confess
 
The first thing I stole
was my mother’s necklace,
deep blue sapphires set in gold.
Fake sapphires, false gold.
 
The necklace was metallic cold
and I thought when it circled my neck,
after I’d done my best hair-up-in-a-roll
type thing, I faintly became an adult.
 
I reached for her Mystique,
dabbed it on my wrists, throat, fluffed 
powder over the spots on my cheeks
and rouged my little lips full pout.
 
Before I left, I stole her Parisian handbag,
the one with a silver chain; helped myself
to a book from her secret erotic stash, nabbed
her Valium, took off in the night rain.
 
I was carrying her suitcase, loving the feel
of high heels and her nifty, cherry red hat.
 
I lie of course. I was always a good girl.
Mother made sure of that.
 
I Confess appears in issue 5 of Alchemy Spoon  https://www.alchemyspoon.org 

The Uninvited
 We flew to a country of golden temples,
golden Buddhas six times as tall as a man.
But now, here’s what I think about most:
 
Garden lodge. Petal-strewn bed. Bowl of fruit
on a table. Banana skin partially stripped, flesh
well chomped, not by us. Too munched for a mouse.
 
I ransacked cupboards, peered under chairs.
Searched for a hole, a gap, a crack big enough.
Had I left a window open, a door unlatched?
 
Someone delivered a metal cage, banana-baited.
At first, not a squeak. Then I woke to a maniac
rattling of bars. The thing and I stared at each other.
 
Fingery claws, breathing fur. The naked flex
of its tail; those eyes, onyx-black. I could just about watch
as it shivered there in the cage. But when it was gone, 
 
it was still here. In a sealed wooden house.
Me and the creature: all one, according to Buddha.
What lives in shadow is always seeking a gap.

 from The Uninvited (Indigo Dreams)

More
A further selection of poems can be found on the links below:
Poetry & Covid : University of Plymouth:  Two poems
University of Exeter:      In the Company of Insects: (audio) Cicada Love Song  
Ink Sweat & Tears:   The Nearly Times
And Other Poems:  At Castle Neroche; Things My Mother Said
Indigo Dreams  www.indigodreams.co.uk/chrissy-banks/4594681043
The Poetry Business  https://poetrybusiness.co.uk/product-category/books-pamphlets/pamphlets/