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CAUGHT IN THE NET 130 - POETRY BY
HANNAH STONE
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|
the stigmata of my wedding ring has faded now
the band of flesh pressed by its golden band
grows smooth and naked now
from; HE AND SHE, YOU AND ME by Hannah Stone |
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CONTENTS
1 - BIOGRAPHY
2 – POETRY
HE AND SHE, YOU AND ME
YOU KNOW WHO
VACATION
DRIP FEED
BANBURY
ALGEBRA
CHRISSIE
TARN MOOR
PAST PRESENT TENSE
DOUBLETAKE |
3 - AFTERWORD
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1 – BIOGRAPHY: Hannah Stone
Hannah Stone has been writing poetry since the age of seven and has read it
avidly since as long as she can remember. She is particularly inspired by Celtic
poets and the Celtic landscape, by the English metaphysical poets and by Billy
Collins, by relationships with God, people and the world around. She studied
English Literature and Language at London University 1977-1980 and was awarded a
2.1 honours degree. Aged 15 she was a winner in the Daily Mirror Children’s
Literary Competition, for ‘Sonnet to Edward Burne-Jones’, published in Children
as Writers 4, Heinemann, London,1977, at 20 won the Ivy-Compton Burnett
Prize, Royal Holloway College, University of London, for a collection of 40
poems written up to age 18. After a fallow period she recommenced writing and is
due to start studying for an MA in Creative Writing at Leeds Trinity University
October 2013. Since 2012, she has performed at Open Mics for Leeds ‘Night
Vision’ and other groups at the Sandbar, Horsforth, at longer slots for Heart,
Headingley and EPIC in Roundhay. Several poems have been published by local
journals and ‘Syntax’ is due to be published in the November 2013 edition of
‘Matathan’ Magazine on Death and the Afterlife. in her 'other' life she holds a
variety of academic posts for three different universities.
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2 - POETRY
HE AND SHE, YOU AND ME
The stigmata of my wedding ring has faded now
the band of flesh pressed by its golden band
grows smooth and naked now
My old self sloughed
this skin has never known his touch
he whose flesh was one with mine becomes
the other, lives in alien skin, with some new flesh
dead without burial
gone without farewell
and now you touch me, you
or is it tu?
since intimate is what we are, skin deep
(I dare not share what grows beneath)
Skin deep, half flayed
Your touch on me grows gentle scars
________________________________
YOU KNOW WHO
Wet Bloomsbury evenings now
will always smell of you
loose-limbed and buoyant, your stride
yielding to mine, we dodge the puddles.
The beard and scarf are new, but underneath
is quintessential you, quick-tongued, alert
to nuances familiar and fresh.
Damp but laughing, we thread along
a labyrinth of darkened rooms to find
such warmth, such stillness as we lie
pillowed on papers and coats and finally
your spent softness quietly curls on my thigh.
Above our heads, an impotent winking eye
insists there is a message to retrieve.
_____________________________________
VACATION
Being merely human, it isn’t the empty nest
that ruffles my bosom, but
the denuded fridge.
For two decades I nourished you,
first the blind ignorance of a dividing cell
that sought to split my body
then month after month of your voracious mouth
sucking my goodness, the downy sphere
of your butting head
cradled like a third breast
against my eager heart.
Now, hungry for knowledge
which I can neither give nor share,
you feed yourself mysteriously on books
and screens
and caffeine shots,
a lean Columbus returning with new fruits
your discourse reshaped
with clever acronyms
sustained by continents of discovery
and expensive taste in biscuits.
Last night, as I drifted towards sleep
I heard your lovely footfall, descending
through the darkened house,
the squeal of the fridge door
and the unmuffled clatter of cutlery.
DRIP FEED
Why you here reading accused an unsummoned philosopher
clad in nihilistic black.
Dark, too, was his dogma – we’ll all heading for that drip
at the end of your life, they plug you in
that drip
salt and water cos we came out of the ocean
we need the water, he proclaims, warming to his theme, leaning
as if into the wind.
Gusts of breakfast cider belch into my face.
We came craving the sugar of the land
Not just the salt and water, so why
You reading, what’s your script
All the money’s in videos now, you wasting
Your time, he shouts
Making it sound like I’ve filched minutes –
Hours even – from the store of his
Coffee-spooned day.
Why you bother, he finishes
And the small craft in his angry mind
Tacks off as he lurches
Into the unresponsive ocean of Russell Square
And still I wait for the library to open,
The harbour towards which I pilot
My flimsy bobbing vessel, reaching up
To impale myself on the cannula
Of the printed page,
The slow drip-feed of other people’s knowledge
Filling my veins for a shift or two,
A quick fix, a sugar high, before oblivion.
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BANBURY
So it’s next stop Oxford but he’s pissed because his
Fucking expensive headphones are all crapped up
All those paper-rounds for nothing, and can he have
A loan of mine to listen to an episode of South Park?
(digging crossly at a muchpicked spot).
I pass them over, but want to warn him
There’ll be a homeopathic residue of the Dichteliebe
Or maybe a Bach cantata
Which might interfere with reception.
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ALGEBRA
If a fifty three year old woman
who lives halfway up a hill
leaves her house at 9a.m.
to teach a 10.30 class,
and walks three miles
(through four inches of fresh snow)
and half a mile on two inches of slush
(which contains 15% compacted ice)
and stops,
twice,
to listen to birdsong,
how many calories does she burn
and what colour is the sky?
You should show your workings out.
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CHRISSIE
On your seventieth birthday you jived groin to groin
with your man, your smile as radiant as your shoes,
wick as a flame in your white suit, dodging
the potted herbs, the parked cars in the lane beyond the yard.
The sun shone.
At my fiftieth, my invitation went unanswered, your phone
rang and rang. Time passed for us both.
Today, passing the place where the dancing and music spilled
from the house like a glass overflowing
I glanced unbidden through the window.
Where were your books? And surely
those florid curtains can’t be yours?
I hope you’re still dancing, Chrissie,
one small pale hand clasping
the firm ebony fingers of your lover,
or that the candle was snuffed out,
not that your flame is guttering
in an airless sterile room, shrouded
in crimplene, with Velcro slipons
instead of dancing shoes.
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TARN MOOR
On the way to somewhere else, I stopped,
mud under my feet, a large man
with a flat rake – ‘There are ewes
with young lambs’ says the notice
‘in the burial ground area.
Please ensure all gates are closed.’
But there’s no bleating today, only
the hissing of passing cars on the A65,
and perhaps the echo of your new brother’s laughter,
(gift of God, announcer of new life).
Somewhere here, little Anna,
your small frame was buried, and I saw
your mother’s smooth face age ten years
in as many months –
though I only ever saw your image
mirrored in her tenderness, before
you stopped here
on the way to somewhere else.
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PAST PRESENT TENSE
He’d dubbin his boots
and shrug into an anorak
shouldering the biggest pack
and we’d scramble behind
as he forged streams, skidded on screes
and clambered over walls
where my hesitation cost me
a small scar inside my left knee.
You, on the other hand,
are confused by shoes.
As I kneel to slot your heel
into the soft leather,
you tentatively touch my hand.
As for laces, who can understand
their meanderings? Your overcoat conspires
to evade your arms and in place of a rucsac
you select a trusted stick
for our circuit round the park.
Soon, I think, you will shuffle to a halt.
You and he will be united
in crumbling ash, which we’ll hoist
on our backs, a light load to carry
to the top of the mountain.
_____________________________
DOUBLETAKE
Mindfuck you call it – technically,
cognitive dissonance. First, the place,
a cottage garden hugging the moorland path,
where he shudders as he beats the bounds,
spinning his fantail like a disco-ball,
wafting with shapely feathers an indifferent peahen,
his urgent hoarseness the solo
to a backing track of curlews and larks.
She’s unimpressed – seen it before –
but look again – no turquoise eye
is shimmering on a bronzed plume.
Perhaps the Pennine rain has bled him dry
for every feather’s innocent of tint,
and like the sky’s broad colourchart of greys
so he displays each variant of white,
of clouds, of cottongrass, of milk,
spume rising from the stream
or mist plunging down from the hillside.
He’s trembling, striving to keep it up:
still he gyrates, still she ignores
his desperate pride, the hunger
for her plump, ordinary brownness.
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3 - Afterword
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