Android
I bought a flapjack and a
Lucozade
and drove six miles to an unconventional wilderness
just outside of Frodsham.
It was here
amongst the gorse petals and defunct Rentokil
bait stations that I first kissed a girl.
Rebecca or Rebekah, I don’t know how
she spelt it,
but I do remember her skin as cold as an android’s.
Presentation
I had to sit through a presentation
on your death. Slide after slide
about the terrific mutilations
carried out on your body.
Had I willed it somehow?
I felt I deserved to be a suspect,
even if this was Birmingham 1989,
a year before my birth.
When my sister smashed
a white hole the size of a fist
in the kitchen sink, I was fourteen.
She protested, they stuck
to the facts. I was hiding my hands
behind my back,
I was hiding myself behind my back.
New-Born
I wasn’t there at the births
of Callan and Aidan. They might
have been born in the Arctic Circle
or on the decks of The Tardis,
I was no less aware of it.
I was probably more concerned
with the birthing
of a second litter of puppies
that we would sell at £200 a pop.
The first labours I saw
were the labours of this little Thai woman
on The Baby Channel.
Children
usually. But there she was,