Type to be Approached with Caution
"Goodbye" I said
and in his arms I shook
with cool crisis.
Later, I dreamt of a night
listening to tinkles –
footsteps in a cathedral,
me on all fours, like Magdalene.
I saw his Virgin lover
birthing her young.
Will he put me
in a mud tomb,
or a bedroom
with earthen walls,
a giant oak above?
If our lips met
would apple blossom
break open,
would we fall
under a mountain?
Monique Roffey
©Frogmore Papers, Issue 73, March 09
Hilton, Park Lane
The so-so hotel,
let’s meet there again.
I shall wear a slit skirt,
flash my long legs at you.
In the lift, we’ll kiss
like pirates, assassins,
wild Arabs back from
flat open desserts,
or lovers who’ve found
each other again.
In the so-so bedroom
we’ll eat milles feuilles
drink Sancerre, gossip
and plot, read Choderlos
de Laclos, imagine once
you were a bourgeois
intellectual, me a courtesan;
you visited my boudoir
frequently and there we invented
a new and vibrant France.
In the so-so bed
we shall map the weeks
and months since we met
on stomachs, thighs, necks.
We shall be ourselves,
a writer and a reader, kindred
strangers, modern fantasists,
exceptional and ordinary,
the sex between us a little
hit and miss, a little so-so.
©Monique Roffey
Demand
Give me back
my smile, hand me back
my eyes, wipe my lips of tears,
wrench my heart from your chest.
Return it to me now.
Restore my spirits,
replace my quick laugh, my words
in your book, the line about the walls
like the colour of conversation.
Pay me back
the haircuts, the times
I painted your toenails green.
Send me back those eggs, especially
those damned eggs.
Hand everything back right now;
I’ll
rebuild another woman.
©Monique Roffey
Reggae on my Stereo
Your Sunday morning voice
and war-of-the-daisies face
have not yet vanished
along with your ashes.
You still dance with me,
alive as the reggae
on my stereo. Today we danced
in the front room;
we held each other
loose, our faces close.
©Monique Roffey
First Love
(for RW, 25 August 1965-29 April 2008)
Those summer nights in your kitchen,
drunk on slapmeonthepatio rum.
Those crepe-soled songs
which twisted up my vows
to forget you.
The winklepickertoed flatmates
who rolled around and around
on the lino.
In the mirror I once thought
– let’s end it all.
Now you are ended
I still see your self-portrait
in a gulp of warm chardonnay.
Even the toaster cosy
haunts me. Those sweat-wakes
after a gram of amphetamine: the time
we woke to find we shared the same dream.
You never did patch those shoes.
©Monique Roffey
Ring
That wedding ring you wear
can’t defend you: its powers
are dull against the heat
of this afternoon.
I know you’ve been watching:
my arse, curves, curls.
Watch out. I’ll suck that ring
clean over the knuckle,
pop it in my mouth - swallow hard.
©Monique Roffey
Poor Bitch
Dat a bad dog,
he pointed to
the emaciated bitch:
four puppies,
skin-and-bone,
clung to her
ragged teats.
She eat dem,
he gestured.
What?
She eat dem.
We stared.
She had more. Ten or so,
but she eat dem.
Later, after lunch,
we left the swamp,
passed houses like boxes
balancing on match-legs
in the remnants of the wetlands –
the rice-growers
now selling watermelons.
After a Carib
had loosened us up,
we saw more dogs
penned in a chicken coop.
My heart bleeds,
said the German girl, eyes filmed.
I nodded.
©Monique Roffey
Howlers
Rain comes in a moment
and the Howlers complain.
Only a gang of them, seven or eight,
their groans more one massive beast,
a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
We hear the rain-roar for a minute
before feeling the drops.
Some of us sit on the root of a sandbox tree.
We use Morrish palms as umbrellas,
snap pictures of each other;
then we sit in the downpour,
listening: monkeys and rain.
©Monique Roffey
Dead Porcupine
Is it
a butter-rose
stamped into the earth?
Pale yellow quills:
musk, the air disturbed -
maybe an ocelot got it?
Did it slip,
lose its prehensile grip?
Or did it dawdle
too long
across the forest floor?
The feline coughed spikes -
that’s for sure.
Unless a jungle cat
has the technique off pat:
nibble gently, innards out.
©Monique Roffey
In the Bowl
On the grass, a woman,
casual-like,
cleaning fish?
Next to her,
a bowl.
In the bowl,
torsos,
black-silver tiger-striped,
cascadoo
flipping and batting,
shocked
to be so dead.
