You too were leaning
on the edge,
counting last seconds of light
until the dark should come.
In the blackening sky a moon,
thin twist of lemon skin,
holds back the dark like hope.
from; Watching for the Spring by Gill McEvoy
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CAUGHT IN THE NET 77 - POETRY BY GILL
McEVOY
Series Editor - Jim Bennett
___________________________________________________________________________
Introduction by Jim Bennett
Hello. Welcome to the next in the series of CITN featured poets. We will be looking at the work of a different poet in each edition and I hope it will help our readers to discover some new and exciting writing. This series is open to all to submit and I am now keen to read new work for this series.
You can join the CITN mailing list at
-
http://www.poetrykit.org/pkl/index.htm
and following the links for Caught in the Net.
_________________________________________________________________
|
|
You too were leaning on the edge, counting last seconds of light until the dark should come.
In the blackening sky a moon, thin twist of lemon skin, holds back the dark like hope.
from; Watching for the Spring by Gill McEvoy |
________________________________________________________________
CONTENTS
1 - BIOGRAPHY
2 – POETRY
The Dairy-room in the Old Farmhouse
On Reading Dannie Abse
Peaches for Pickling
Petrified Forest, Meols, Wirral.
Philology
The Wayward Button
The Power of Three
Time of Leaves
Visit from a Long-eared Bat.
Voice
Watching for the Spring
3 - AFTERWORD
___________________________________________________________________________
1 – BIOGRAPHY: GILL McEVOY
Gill McEvoy, poet based in Chester,UK where she runs several regular poetry groups: Zest! Open Floor nights at Alexander's Rufus Court, Chester; The Poem Shed, a workshop group; Poem catchers, a venture dedicated to bringing good workshops to poets in Cheshire and the Wirral; and The Golden Pear, a poetry reading group. All of this surprises her enormously as a few years ago she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and warned that she probably had only a short while to live. That "short while" has enabled her to have 2 pamphlets published:
"Uncertain Days" and "A Sampler" (Happenstance Press, 2006,2008) and a full collection "The Plucking Shed" (Cinnamon Press 2010). She remembers with gratitude her awkward beginnings as a poet, at Borders poetry evenings, hosted by Jim Bennett.
______________________________________________________________
2 - POETRY
The Dairy-room in the Old Farmhouse
Its silence pinions you
as if snakes had risen from its shelves
to turn you into stone.
In its gloom you’re thrust back
to a pig-tailed, scab-kneed you, dress torn
from scrambling through barbed wire.
Your skin goose-pimples in the ooze
of sweat from cold slate slabs.
Slowly, like an invisible fan, air opens;
the seductive scent of cooling milk uncurls.
Just as you used to do you scoop a thumb
through the slick of yellow cream,
wait till the hollow heals itself
and only then you swallow.
_______________________
On Reading Dannie Abse
If my life were in your hands
might you pause,
your scalpel raised,
halted by a new line
entering your head?
And when you stitch me up
would you sew
a bright dewfall of words
into my body’s purse?
_____________________________
Peaches for Pickling
They are wedged in their bushel basket
like a crowd in a stadium,
cheering the sun’s ball on its arc
from rise to fall, their ripe scent
surging like a chant of summer.
She empties them out on the tabletop:
they scurry, scatter, hesitate,
then shiver to a stop
as if they were oddly cold inside
their felted skins of fur.
How will it be tonight,
her knives and pickling pans all done,
each fruit bald and naked
in the mirror
of the jars?
_____________________________
Petrified Forest, Meols, Wirral.
There was a storm last night,
the kind that scoops up waves
like massive cabers,
hurls them over the sea-wall.
Earth shook all night
with the boom of their fall.
It ripped out railings from the walks,
sucked up sand in a furious mouth
as wide as a tunnel.
And dug us up.
Time-frozen stumps of blackened wood,
we’ve slept for centuries
in our cemetery of sand,
wrecked fossils of another time,
another place.
__________________________
Philology
In the dust-embalmed light
bleached posters showed,
side-view and cross-section,
how tongue, lips, palate, voice-box
channel air to make a sound,
then ball it up to pitch it in the space
between speaker and listener:
this was language being shaped.
Every Thursday we shuffled past the dead
exhibits in the Museum Building,
upstairs to Philology, to study Language
on its journey down the centuries.
We sat there, draughts snuffling round our feet,
watching the lecturer deliver through his dry
tobacco mouth the sounds he spoke of.
On his ashy tongue plosives, dentals,
glottals, uvulars and palatals
shrivelled up like dying leaves.
________________________
The Wayward Button
I burnt your coat in November,
Bonfire Night, when else?
God knows, that coat was you:
stubborn in the way it wouldn’t burn,
awkward in the way it slumped on top the pile,
out of shape with everything,
the world, itself.
That coat was every morning
when I couldn’t start the day on time:
you to wash and dress, kids to get to school,
and you, soiled again: three more lines
of washing, sheets, pyjamas, towels
to hang outside.
That coat was each Day Centre afternoon
when you refused to get in the car and I,
with murder in my heart - shopping to fetch,
washing to bring in before the rain,
dinner burning slowly on the stove -
would force you in, all sixteen stone,
then feel the scald of tears.
It played a last trick when it burned:
a button loosed by flame fell from the fire,
rolled to rest at my right foot. It lay there
like a small dog begging amnesty.
Next morning when I raked the ashes flat
I picked it up. Now it goes
everywhere with me.
__________________________
The Power of Three
For three months all she
dreamed about was you:
she named your name,
practised saying it
again, again,
papered rooms,
sewed bright quilts,
and painted rainbows,
just for you.
All you came to
was three stains
on the bed-sheets;
three black Furies
trumpeting
another death.
_____________________________
Time of Leaves
Five o’clock arrives
and still there is a streak
of blue and yellow light
thinning out across the sky.
It is enough:
the buds can feel
the light returning,
silently begin to swell.
Birds hear the stirring
in the tight-furled sheaves,
know the time of leaves
is not so far away.
___________________________
Visit from a Long-eared Bat.
Fierce winds have flung you in from the night,
hurled you against the lit veranda wall,
a spatter of black mud. You cling.
We greet your strange arrival with delight.
I see the fish-hook on your wing,
the thin vanes on its leathered fan
as you splay it out, then draw it in,
your soft wax melting in and out of shape.
Your ears, black spathes of arum,
shiver to the echo of a moth in flight.
You’ve moved right round; now, upside-down,
could plummet any second
like a fat ripe plum,
splatter on the stones below,
stain them with the seep of
sloe-dark blood.
The night is lashed by wind,
clouds claw across the moon’s white face.
A moth blows in and batters at the lamp.
Your sudden shadow shears my head.
_______________________________
Voice
It comes before the squeak
of wheel and chain,
booming up the tow-path,
frightening the ducks,
hits the phone mast,
scuttles down the water-tower walls,
crosses the canal and bounces off
the terraced cottages.
It’s not addressed
to any of us walking here.
Hood shapes a megaphone
around his face, amplifying
words that baffle
with their lack of sense.
The bike creaks by at last;
his feet turn even circles,
his eyes fixed on some future
like a sailor’s seeking land.
When he’s passed
we hear harsh laughter
ripping back along the path.
___________________________
Watching for the Spring
(in memory of poet Dike Omeje)
She has been leaning on the sink
these past twenty minutes
counting the last moments of the day
before the tidal wave of night
engulfs the house.
Her weight has made her forearms ache,
resting on the rolled enamel edge
so long.
You too were leaning
on the edge,
counting last seconds of light
until the dark should come.
In the blackening sky a moon,
thin twist of lemon skin,
holds back the dark like hope.
And there, the Evening Star,
pulsing, larger than life,
like you.
______________________________________________
3 - Afterword
Email Poetry Kit -
info@poetrykit.org - if you would like
to tell us what you think. We are looking for other poets to feature in
this series, and are open to submissions. Please send one poem and a short
bio to - info@poetrykit.org
Thank you for taking the time to read Caught in the Net. Our other magazine s
are Transparent Words ands Poetry Kit Magazine, which are webzines on the Poetry Kit site and this can be found at -
http://www.poetrykit.org/