Two Poems by Penny Boxall

Miss W.

In the bad year we happen
to cross paths on the slipway
by the river. She is—as ever.
Stoic. Myopic. Her blunt hair.
Her wide mouth smiling vaguely,
as one might to a total stranger.

Meanwhile, years collapse inward
like a faulty telescope. We are again
in class, split down the middle
for or against some moral stance.
Those words, then, in her straight-
forward voice: Some of you, someday,
might have to make this choice.

Common sense? Prophesy? How
I’ve taken it to heart. And as
the moments slip—she (this instant)
stepping over a puddle to let me pass—
I do not know if we-then, we-now
move closer together, or further apart.

The Artful Jack

Oh, that ye were all like Jack Sheppard!… Let me exhort ye, then, to open the locks of your hearts with the nail of repentance! Burst asunder the fetters of your beloved lusts! – mount the chimney of hope! – take from thence the bar of good resolution! – break through the stone wall of despair! — Annals of Newgate, 1754

The Parson’s Words come out as Smoke                       he has a Fire in him

Not us              in tall Pews stamping our bloodless Feet                       
we spy through uncoloured Windows     Jackdaws hanging                    on the Wind’s Gallows
receiving hasty Pardons            jerking back to the World           a fine Game!

There is a Net of Ice on Gables and Tiles                                    hiding the Shape of Things
                       that I may guess                       where Jack is

I embroidered Jack                   caught him in Thread     on a lace Handkerchief
so small you wouldn’t think                   to look                          A Face in a Design
all of one Colour                        that he might be sly

Perhaps he is hid in a Chimney                          crouching among impertinent Mice
Or down by the River    under a flickering Bridge            accommodating himself to a Shadow
            Or slotted between the Legs of an Escritoire                  posing stiff as a Chair
Or shut up in a Sedan               unguessable as another’s Thought

Perhaps Jack is sunk in a Foxhole                     elbowing Roots and Worms                   sprouting
vivid Buds         from his Eyebrows and Ears
            Or he is become           black Sky                     black Water                  a patch of Fog
A stir of wind                He roams over shuttered London
Sublimated       uncontained                              Nothing but Eye      and thinking Fingers
He sleights a Lady’s Purse from a trembling Hand                                  he helps himself                       
            to the Milkmaid’s Pail brimming of Cream
                        a Gentleman’s Waistcoat from his Back             the silver Moon if he wants it
(spooning the Egg of the Sun)
                        There is in short Nothing            beyond his Reach

Fate is as Glass to him                          prodigious easy smashed          and we
must sift through jagged Fragments                               and draw our own Blood

Look                 a Shape slipping the Corner      running on our Behalf
                                                                                                            the Takers after him
                                                                                    and he will make it yet
         for he is clever as Smoke

Penny Boxall's collections are Ship of the Line (2014), Who Goes There? (2018) and, with artist Naoko Matsubara, In Praise of Hands (2020). She won the Edwin Morgan Poetry Award in 2016 and the 2018 Mslexia prize. In 2019 she was Visiting Research Fellow in the Creative Arts at Merton College, Oxford, and is currently Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of York.