Two Poems by Geraldine Clarkson

Mill Street

There are only so many times.
There are only so many names you can call yourself.
There are only three people you can remember.

There is the mother put to bed upstairs, glamorously ill.
There is the brother put to bed downstairs, whimpering.
There is the daughter, fourteen, glad-eyed, useful.

Gladioli and old-fashioned stocks fill the yard.
It is a flock-lined corridor of a house.
The kitchen stocks milk and devilled liver.

The bathroom seeps urine and ethanol.
Only four rooms are in use.
Sunlight splashes into the east-facing hall.

The girl paces about, misses school, stays up late.
Messes with nutmeg and new vinaigrettes in a crucible.
Bookmarks recipes from the internet.

People say they couldn’t call in.
People say you couldn’t call out.

betrothed to edwin drood

i drewed his picture on my face, made lips big like wb yeats before the world was made, edenface, volcano mouth, which drooled. i travelled three generations of my family seeking solace of any sort which was free from the hoping gene. they put me at nuns’ house and i entertained visitors, broke the bond like cleaving bedsheets. the gold ring taken. harum-scarum opium fug and slow smiles. no one knew me by my ur-face. i was his, though he was stilled in lime.

Geraldine Clarkson's second full collection, Dream Island Home for Isabelle Huppert, is forthcoming from Verve Poetry Press.