Tales of dark normal, fantastic and macabre
Dickens Field, London
Carlington Black, 2017
Clutching cellphone
to shaking young ear
Black hair, wrapped for Christmas
Fashionably morose
In Dickens Fields
Red nails, Black puffer, Dark brows.
Sobbing at digital fragments
Of spoken, news, transmitted.
Boyfriend gone, Mother found, Brother dead
We, We, undead
Impervious, Imperious, Lunching
In Lant Street
Where Dickens boarded
In shadow of the Shard
Daddy in Marshalsea
His mother cried
Up early for washing
Two centuries of shit
Circling, Coriolous, clockwise
A smartphone buzzes
In the middle of it all
She staggers to park bench
Winter wonderland
Fifty metre bitter halo
Solitude surrounded by
Revving courier van,
Wandering student, shiftworker, job hunter
No sobbing wanted heard
But really, our discomfort
Is cold comfort, can’t repress
the sobbing, a few words
Sobbing, Bare words, Sobbing,
What will she do when
she puts the phone down?
It’s raining in Jerusalem
The sibilant storm welcomed
to this waiting place
silent, without judgement.
Invited to nestle among
tree clotted sheets
knotted at Mataimoana
Raindrops, countless
Coalesce.
Soak shoes off path
haste to reach Saint Josephs.
Where the brass knob sticks
Resists
damp entry to
the storm’s clumsy pash.
A door finally gives in
to desiccated narthex,
Aubert’s consonant shrine.
East wall, the silent chancery
scowls away the ersatz
congregationalist.
To wander the soaked lawn
where carved rills of khaki water
run toward a weed clumped paddock.
Where Mary stands in
pale shelter
blue linen gown
and thick leaved rhododendron
glade. No sky no horizon.
Fleshed bare
right foot.
Toes like writing fingers.
Nails flat and half mooned.
They never wrote a day in their life.
Washed clean again anyway.
Bishop Cullinane planted
pohutakawa
In honour she never wanted
Now stunted. Out of place in these shadows.
Aubergine lichen licks the branches.
Mary stares,
steadfastly low.
Moisture springs
dribbles down
her inside ankle.
Nature’s kenosis.
This is
fortitude.