Read an Excerpt
Clueless Dogs
By Rhian Edwards Poetry Wales Press Ltd
Copyright © 2012 Rhian Edwards
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-85411-595-9
CHAPTER 1
Parents' Evening
We feel she may be cheating
at reading and spelling.
She has failed to grasp the planets
and the laws of science,
has proven violent in games
and fakes asthma for attention.
She is showing promise with the Odyssey,
has learned to darn starfish
and knitted a patch for the scarecrow.
She seems to enjoy measuring rain,
pretending her father is a Beatle
and insists upon your death
as the conclusion to all her stories.
The Hatching
Born in the airing cupboard
to the mothering pulse of the boiler,
something cracked its own code
to unearth a second darkness,
a suddenness of space
greater than itself.
Perched on a pyramid
of folded towels and flannels
and crowned in the fragments
of its quondam world,
the fledgling broke into ugly song,
scissoring its beak at the bars
of a wooden planked sky.
The Petrifying Well
We lowered ourselves
into the petrifying well
where lime turned top hats
and bird's nests to stone
and the copper wishing coins
were furring to grey.
We slid on the sediment
of wet currency
as we filled our pockets
with the weight of dead wishes.
The water bleached us –
fossilised our futures –
making rocks of our boredom.
Sick Bed
It went as far as the eyes, stirred
something up, stitching them shut.
The morning I woke to the immediate black,
eyelids padlocked, I howled for myself,
but the tears had nowhere to go, they stayed put,
dammed up against the thin walls of skin.
In the blacked-out room, you let
me lie on you again.
You dabbed and circled pink ointment
into the mohair itch of my body,
while I wriggled, sickened most
at being put back in nappies.
You touched my cheek and palms
with the cool plastic of toys.
I heard you in the doorway, watching
with your hand on your hip.
You did the crying for me,
smoking cigarettes in prayer.
Broken Lifeboat
Mother sleeps foetal in the hollow
of the blue Chesterfield. Praying hands
tucked between her corduroy thighs,
she scowls at her dreams.
I climb the arm of the couch, careful
in a way that is not child-like,
lowering myself into the berth,
the fortified nook behind her legs.
My toy daughters and I are adrift
on a broken lifeboat in a carpet ocean.
Mother is ill and close to death.
Pillow sharks lie in wait.
In whispers, my plot is played out.
My dolls die of starvation.
I hum to them, cradling their lifeless
bodies to my unstarted breast.
Playing Dead
I sucked hold of my breath
for the trick of a noiseless heart.
Head cocked, eyes shut,
mouth ever so slight, I directed
myself into an elegant infant death,
apparently without cause.
I pictured you shaking me,
putting your ear to my chest,
making the screams you never should.
The moment you gave up on me,
I planned to flutter back to life,
rubbing my eyes with my fists,
whispering your favourite name as reward.
After all, my short-lived death
was punishment enough
for ignoring me in the back
with only the occasional glance
in the rear-view mirror.
I carried on dying for years.
You were glad of the silence.
Bridgend
The children are dropping like flies
in my hometown. Nineteen suicides
in no time at all. Nana would have called it
a Biblical curse. Others are guessing
it's some kind of fashion
and hanging is all the rage.
Except for the boy from B&Q,
who tied some rope to a lamppost
got into his car
and pressed down the accelerator.
A work mate found him.
He had his seat belt on,
his head had tumbled to his feet.
My father complains they only parade
the ugly side of his town.
"Why don't they show the stepping stones,
the castle or Southerndown beach?"
But then, Southerndown has been crowned
the third most popular suicide site in Britain.
Cliffs like headstones for giants!
The Samaritans have been lobbying the Vale
for years for a phone box
with a direct dial to a volunteer.
Eventually, the council surrendered and built
the box at the foot of the cliff.
Going Back for Light
Got blacklisted at the colliery for making ructions.
They made him sink too deep and those pocketed
gases got the better. "Nothing like being in hell
with the sky raining rocks at you."
His coughs had been turning red for a while mind.
Explosion lost him a lung and some stomach.
Can't complain though, got him the compo,
couldn't have bought the dance hall without it.
Loved that dance hall, he did. Even laid down
the boards with his own bare hands.
Had to gut the Caerphilly Hall to get that sprung floor.
Beryl had the shock of her life
when she saw Danny leaving, fag in mouth,
a broken-up dance floor under his arm.
Always smoking he was, even with that lonely lung.
You'd have thought there was something missing
from that face if smoke weren't spilling out of it.
Even when he shaved, there it was, cigarette
wagging at his reflection and him scraping the blade
all round it. Getting ready for no good, we reckoned.
"Where you off to Dan?" Edith would ask.
"Going back for light," he'd answer to the mirror.
Never one for talking much. Didn't have to,
what with that smile and those eyes of his.
Pair of chocolates, those eyes.
Daft over him, women were. His dark looks that was,
mind, and him being miner turned ballroom dancer,
moving like milk being poured into a glass.
Threw everyone when he married Edith,
not the prettiest creature but smart as a whip,
everyday studying the Times from cover to cover.
Good chapel girl see, never smoked, never drank
never smiled unless she had to. Crossed the room
to stir his tea if he told her.
Danny got all sick and had to give up the fags.
Took up Rolos and peppermints instead, kept boxes of them.
Always something rolling round in his mouth,
never words though, not till he started dying proper
and we got into a halo round his armchair,
tobacco tin on his lap, his old face back.
The Welshman Who Couldn't Sing
I'm sketching his sound;
a motorbike's rumble
or the cartoon voice
of an elderly sheepdog.
The Welshman who couldn't sing,
who could massacre a funeral hymn
with a throatful of catarrh
and a hiccup-spit of words,
a never-ending baffle
to the women of his making.
I'm scratching off a smile
on a weathered, beetroot face.
His Brillo-padded cheeks
could scour skin off my pecking lips
and a yellowing snigger
that thawed me to tears.
I'm mimicking his canon now;
food was his Bible.
With lamb chop in his clutches,
he purred with every gnaw,
his podgy pygmy fingers,
dripping thick in minted gravy,
would wriggle in the supper air
as if knitting a potent sentence.
I'm fattening up his bones
to a torso like a turnip.
A hill of hairless belly
I climbed and conquered as a baby
and a spooned-out pit of navel
that could house an old ten-penny.
I'm giving back his limbs
two arms wooden to the hip,
sleeves of freckles to the knuckle,
fingers curled in threatless fists.
His gypsy-dog thin legs
marched with the scurries
of an unleashed toddler,
forever, it seems, betraying
the weight he was made to haul.
House Key
Your mother climbed the driveway,
found you playing marbles
on the doorstep, singing to yourself.
You knew full well to post
your hand through the letterbox,
grab the latchkey on the string
and let yourself in. You elected
to be shut out, petrified
a house without people
could swallow or erase you.
You now pace your front lawn,
the self-made man, the seller
of houses. You light cigarettes
and flick them away, kick up
the flowers, punishing them
for their idleness, your wife's
truancy, her unmentioned absence.
You prod the doorbell in provocation,
choking your home with a chronic
merry-go-round chime. You spy
through the eyelid of the letter box,
patrol the outside walls like a wolf.
Your family remains unconjured.
Your house keys spill over
the lip of your trouser pocket,
as you tremble in wait in the car.
Traveller
The crooked stem of the driveway
and the terracotta jigsaw
of the flower pots you've run over,
are the last leg of this journey home
to find you tucked inside a frame
of French windows, slumped and stolid,
head bowed to your chest.
Even dead to the world, you clutch
fast to your glass of red,
the sleeping knight's hand
knows peace on the hilt of his sword.
You are blue-bleached as a statue
in the grasping flickers of the television,
staunch and untouched
by my locked-out calls,
my knuckles beating on glass.
Rhys
Like the time you invited me inside
the ottoman on the landing
and sat on the lid laughing
while I scratched and screamed at the wood.
Or when the babysitter wasn't looking,
you taught me the quickest way to add nine,
showed me to tie my laces with the tale
of two rabbits disappearing down a hole.
Like the day you caught the slow-worm
that tried to whip away the sun,
letting it loose into the folds
of the blanket that I held like a lover.
Not to mention the crimes I invented
for which I never knew you were beaten,
or that summer you took away the stabilisers
to be the sole witness to me riding away.
Like the times I spied in your bedroom,
played your records and fanned open your books,
only to slip between the sheets
with a nakedness meant only for bath time.
Camposuil
From a verse pattern originated at Ty^ Newydd, 2010.
Remember when my sunburn roared like nettle rash
and the daisies died as soon as they were chained?
And when we balanced on the sewage pipe that bridged the Ogwr
and rode the river in the rubber ring of a lorry tyre?
Or in Cefn Glas, when Charlotte from the council estate
got the puppies to lick Monster Munch off her tongue?
Don't tell me you don't remember necking Shandy
on the roundabout that nearly killed you?
Or when we watched the babysitter get shagged,
balls of socks in our gobs and we still fell apart.
And the school holiday we played knock-a-door-run
and you poured boiling water on my second degree sunburn?
No Place
Painted roses and ivy scratch
a tangled stairway up the wall.
They twist an arch around a false
front door, sealed before it learned.
The windows are criss-crossed
clown eyes, paneless frames
shedding black silence.
Unhook the face of the house,
peel it open like a page,
every room surrenders itself,
perfectly furnished for no one.
A tall lamp mourns an unused
armchair, a hat stand presides
in the corner like a winter tree.
My hand is the ghost and god
of this home. Fingers drift –
intent for the solid, skate over
the hexagonal table, the velvet
dining room chairs, roll back
the eyelid of the bureau,
pinch open famished drawers.
Fingers scramble through a hatch
into a mock mahogany bedroom –
where the wardrobe is cluttered
with air and the mirror has forgotten
how to watch. The hand pauses –
shrinks from a familiar bed
where a spider closes into a fist.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Clueless Dogs by Rhian Edwards. Copyright © 2012 Rhian Edwards. Excerpted by permission of Poetry Wales 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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