Tattoos
(for E)
They come with stories. Like the woman whose thorny twist
around her shin did not bear roses, but eyes. Her children’s eyes,
lashed almonds of colour, peeping from the leaves.
My tattoo for you would stretch an entire vine. Your footprints
trailed along my calf; your birth weight – a bloom on my thigh.
On my palms – what it was like to hold you, indelible prayers
to size and smell. The date of your death scratched at my heart;
letters of your name in a lace at my neck. Your first words
printed at my mouth, but tricuspid, sump – hidden at my ears.
Everything I spluttered in that psychologist’s chair etched
onto pages of my back; your father re-reading it, as I slept.
Stepping from the bed, my skin would kaleidoscope in sun,
its story dazzling the walls, and over and over child, I would bear you.
C
I’ve come to heighten the present,
throw my body into accident.
A sea of psychedelic skiffs
to choose from and once inside
I brace, await the shock of launch.
Dad and boy are bullied backwards
by larger, louder men. Hooks spark
the ceiling’s grill. Hit side-on,
girls scream. This is fairground
din and babel, with music bucking
in my gut. I’m knocked, shunted
to the side, upper body in metronomic
sway. He comes, with ethereal descent,
swooping from bumper to bumper,
hand on the pole, arms all muscle
and inky stain. The answer to peril: seraph
in ripped jeans, he spins me out on the black
expanse, leaves me shrieking and conductive.
