Read an Excerpt
Small World
By Richard Price Carcanet Press Ltd
Copyright © 2012 Richard Price
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84777-659-4
CHAPTER 1
SMALL WORLD
An old drawer up beyond the children
Little torn-offs, kept, gummed, and a bill window; large small change in matt grey and bronze. 'Are these your medals, Dad?'
A list of do-it-ourselves in feet and inches. Half-hollow plastic letters, red red, blue blue. They won't, can't, endure an open word. Grr – consonant consensus.
A single staple, not yet folded, in self-assembly dust.
Up beyond the children this old drawer, laden (can stick). Easy with it, extract and show.
The Mutual Satellite Assurance Company Limited
A double-planet system –
the Earth and the Moon.
Stability,
maybe stability.
And maybe the moon – you know –
an equal – once.
Sisters – (a little big-sister,
a big little-sister) –
rough couplets,
two haloes of pressure,
mutual, unequal –
the solidarity of interference.
(Their desire to hold.
Their desire to hold back.)
Cocktail hour
Measure out, administer.
Katie's half dribbling, half tiny-bubbling.
She's laughing (gentle). She's not swallowing this, tells it
in a viscous mumble, bright red –
to Miss Piggy on her night-top.
A lip froth of light pink. Epilim
is the trademark; the mixer saliva.
Cheers.
Cheers.
<
Measure out, administer.
A balancing spoonful – red's liquid thisness
accepted but a no-swallow repeat. The jaws grip.
A slow worrying; the spoon's dog-stickish.
I'm pulling carefully this side, carefully that.
Katie is teeth. (By the way,
either animals are not animals or we are all animals.)
Her head moves with me:
she seems to know and she seems to No. Eye contact, smiling.
Finally we are free. The spoon looks wiped clean (tight lipped Katie). No,
no swallow. She's
snorting an avoidance –
turning, turning with a backward shove. The drug-thick syrup still
not down. Now she's ... this way, facing close with a face-full. Her cheeks are puffed up, pursing, pursing, (drama of the mime), twice tight-lipped. She pouts, full of it.
She twitch-teases. She
blurts.
<
We have both dyed. That's sis-gusting! ( – big little-sister Ellen, suddenly at my side).
We're all a crimson speckling (our faces, my peevish glasses).
We are red-spectrum endpapers, delicate, an art house horror clip.
We are blood relations.
Measure out.
Administer.
Book makers
Tuning out and seeking scrap,
any marker to don't-know down a page.
Tuning out.
We'll not be bullied by gangsters in Ellen's gel pen.
We'll not be bullied by gangsters on a white sheet
of printer fodder – surrender all news
to glitter strawberry
and the scent of glitter strawberry scent.
A6ing the A4.
I'm just full of the Cuban infant mortality rate.
How come you don't like your own kids in America?
Casting the first statistic,
a little folded
<
/and over the fold
seeking cutting adage
no, simpler, an artist's book itinerary
slow up
(a keyboard waits six years
for EDCD EEE- DDD- EEE-
EDCD EEE- DDED C —-)
wherever she would go
wherever she would go
<
The house asleep I'm a Special Effect, a digital ghost,
not quite random with the poked remote:
boxed-in music and the truth channelled uncanny by current affairs.
'Rhythm is a dancer' – Katie was a drummer.
The djembe's decoration now
and she's all eyes for the boy bands.
There's Newsnight unanimity, Late Night Revue
(poet-pundits, poet bio-pics, but no poetry),
all a turnoff.
For Ellen this evening there was ocarina emulation,
harps and jazz guitar on the halfpint Yamaha.
Mild interest.
Some space here.
<
/over the fold
(accident on the A6)
it's all manuscripts and mass printlessness,
text art objects, electric sacred-pretend
no, cut that back, make the book
over the fold
for glass boxes, light welling out
kids' glitter all over the audit trail
<
/
look me squarely in the eye
tell me you're not
tell me you're not
tell me you're not
a constructivist
<
/
stapler now, please, we're loose
(a red one lords it in the stuck drawer
of sticker books and weightless costume rings –
'When I grow up I'm going to marry you, Dad.')
<
/
blank inside cover
<
/
We are book makers, bet on it.
Ellen knows 'blurb':
'This book has no front cover.
I am on page 2
with a picture of a dog and Katie.
I am not allowed a dog.
Dad is not being sensible.
I can read music.'
Fold-up
Donny, remember that remainder shop in Soho –
you'd just bought me Damned to Fame: The Life
of Samuel Beckett
and I said not two weeks previous
I'd been propositioned
by a woman a few minutes off duty,
for a laugh I guess,
right in front of the Taschen Klimt?
Ian Brown, ex Stone Roses,
rides a fold-up bicycle backwards
right by it in the video
for the single 'Fear'.
It's an acrostic song –
For Everyone a Road, and so on,
not bad going for pop culture,
though it's not always
one word per line (reminds me
of Roy Fisher's abc
in one of Ron King's exquisite pop-ups,
and how 'Auld Lang Syne'
was once the tune
all America learned the alphabet to,
not that that's a nationalist statement,
and then there's Ellen, counting –
how sixes and sevens
are elided if she's not thinking –
it's the sibilant –
'She is only two years old!' –
so she'll go four, five, six, eight,
almost the kind of counting
Tom Robinson sang
just as he was coming out,
a long time before
'presenter material',
and Katie's teacher is saying
she thinks yes maybe Katie
can recognise one to three
(it's eye-pointing, mainly),
and we'll have to watch
the imbalance
between sides of the rib-cage,
first signs of scoliosis already there,
quite possibly, 'classic symptoms',
but Jackie's already
got the facts, met other parents).
When Ian Brown pedals
backwards for miles –
it must be Berwick Street and environs –
all the pedestrians
are in reverse, too,
blurred –
if I can get our recorder to work
I'll tape it and see how it looks
as you rewind it. Of course,
you'll not get the music –
you'll just have to remember
all the instrumentation.
Not your kind of song anyway.
Meet you there on Wednesday morning? Say eleven?
A rising field
You follow dogs –
you want to command them in telepathic Canine
but spoken Human is the training language – 'Good girl!', 'No-oh!', 'Sit!'
You follow dogs –
sheepdogs, grudgedogs (misunderstood), half-sisters of wolves.
All breeds accepted, no dog too small.
You follow dogs –
sometimes they follow you (friends' dogs, family dogs) –
and now they're pencilled animals, hurtling,
felt-tip assisted, an acceleration of pastels and paint –
you're leading the pack way up the rising field.
You always let me lose
Little toes
Little toes – too much weight.
A five-year-old's feet
ten years younger / a century older
than the waist-up wrestler,
the armchair dancer
little feet won't support.
All aboard the wheelchair! The whirled chair!
All aboard the world chair! Small world. Small world.
Little toes – almost the right shape –
driftwood / abstract-petite.
'A real work of art' – little big-sister –
my hair-pulling grabster,
my sandwich snatcher,
my thief of too good report.
All aboard the wheelchair! The whirled chair!
All aboard the world chair! Small world. Small world.
All aboard the wheelchair! The whirled chair!
All aboard the world chair! Small world. Small world.
Compartment
When the girls all shook a coke to pass around
I saw my daughter find a lifelong friend
for half an hour – all, surely, Katie's age.
Hopeful look, touch of hand; rare common ground.
'It's your turn – twist the lid, or just pretend!'
(The pangs of ifs no smile can quite assuage.)
Katie took the tensioned bomb. She held
then gripped – began to crush the fizzing flask
as if destruction were the game,
as if all belong
through glee, through wrong,
indulgent blame.
The girls all cooed a rising No-oh-oh!, repelled
cartoonishly en masse: Katie should bask
in this generosity, become, in their gangish pantomime,
their celebrity, their beloved dame.
The bottle burst just before they left.
It speckled brownish paste on every blouse,
a school crime, I guess. They laughed, all the same.
At the Modern
Ramp-joy –
Katie is an art lover, turbos down
the turbine free Turbine Hall, achieves
avant-garde speed.
The chair is back to metal,
sculptural, velocity-in-mass,
a just-controlled hurtle
hardly in my hands.
<
In the well-labelled lobby
we are clutter.
The able-bodied demand
Rothko, step-free and fast.
They slip round and in,
fill each low-hum lift, tight-lipped.
They are refined, self-sublime.
They stand their ground.
<
Sir Nicholas Serota lacks so much space
in his scant power station.
<
Are we a filmed installation? I
can't quite see.
'Please
keep the Modern
free.'
Mermaid in a wheelchair
Mermaid in a wheelchair,
teenage refugee.
A guest from Atlantis –
a princess, an apprentice –
an island far from me.
Fifty per cent is by continuous assessment
I will be, I will be, I will be
the World's Best Dad.
I said a hundred.
And I want to see your working.
Ninety per cent is by continuous assesment
I will be, I will be, I will be
the World's Best Mum.
I said five hundred,
and I want to see all your working.
Can you tidy up afterwards, love, thanks?
Oh I like what you've tried to do with your hair.
Missing person
I dreamed you played the piano
just like you'd sing 'We're home!'
(The kids steer past you –
polyphony, strophe.)
That was alone, in this future,
advertised – not just a gesture
(a touch, the gesture,
eyes meet, the gesture) –
advertised –
What was the dream
going to say?
The dream can't remember
but 'all', 'chance',
and 'many a December'
play, perfect,
from your calloused fingers.
I took no lessons.
I teach the fugue.
Namesake
I always wanted.
At the age of sixteen I was born,
talented, dynamic, a glamour.
A tough industry to circuit –
few stand.
I'm frank, direct, bold.
(Concern me:
no-nonsense has earned.)
Me, the thinking-man's realistic!
Icon and a family,
I suppose.
My future looks looking forward,
sharing my challenging,
my you.
Katrina Amy Alexandria Alexis Infield Price, b. 1978, 'Jordan', England
Namesake
Was artists, actors, dancers,
one of the most.
Timid eyes, expressive darling.
Often received advice.
Royal, legendary, solodanserinde.
Also: the little mermaid.
Heart ballet and acting,
1968.
Ellen Price, 1878– 1968, ballerina, Denmark
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Small World by Richard Price. Copyright © 2012 Richard Price. Excerpted by permission of Carcanet Press Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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