Abart Tarn

by Rachel J. Fenton

Tarn is thi umbilicus; to sever thisen from it is to sever thisen.

Tarn is t' choose no shoes rather than wear ones in thi bag

bought from a sun faded box on t' street for pence, damaged on t' tag.

Tarn is t' coyt tha wears for free until it dun't fit and then for sixty

pence per week for t' next year.

Tarn is t' bead er sweat that pricks thi skin when some bleeder bends

thi ear an asks, who a' thee?

Tarn is t' kid who waits till thar in skooel to seh ah saw thee

in Pahndstretchers and everyone's too busy laughing to whuk art,

if they saw thee, they were theer anall.

Tarn is three hours in t' bargain stooer to choose which presents

tha wants t' buy thi family for Christmas, return em t' shelves

and looercate one tha can affooerd, an all t' while be follered by a guard,

who’d be better occupied wetching his weight not thee on closed circuit tv.

Tarn is to visit thi aunt in London, go t' jewellery stooer and suffer

er umiliation, when t' shutters come darn, explaining thar wi er.

Tarn is a whisper that began as a draught under t' door, condensed

on t' winder an soaked through towel in t' wood er thy frame,

blackening, so that regardless er ar much white paint thy applies, spooers

allas show through; thar dirty face.

Tarn'll blow thi ouse darn and ne matter ar much thy explains,

what choices tha mecks, who thy ignores, what clooes tha wears, ar fast

tha runs in bare feeut, tha cannot outrun thisen; tha pooer inside and art;

thy will be undone.

Tarn is t' look upon my face; “am sorry, ah dun't know thee”.

Aids To Practical Nursing (For Joyce Parkin, January 24, 1949, King Edward VII Hospital, Rivelin)

by Rachel J. Fenton

We sit at small tables drinking tea from bone

China cups with biscuits perched on plates; flat,

as hedgehogs, as easy to swallow, and remember

Sister Rose who never lost a baby in all her career.

Curious, I'd stand on the next to bottom stair

and stare at myself in the mirror; the blue pill

I could never get to fit, no matter how I perched it.

Takes more than a hat to make a midwife, she'd say.

I'd tag along on visits anyway: wait in the car, hold

her black book, the diary with the fresh ones in bold,

red ribboned, and pass the bag with miracles and all

the nurse's kit inside, and into this she'd add pink

cards with each new baby's signature stamped in red,

written with heeling. Other times, when not on call,

we'd stay indoors and from the sideboard, an expanse

of teak, she'd take scrap paper, pens, biros mostly,

(not one chewed lid) and pencils brightly coloured

on the outside but everyone drew grey. One memory,

always with the smell of raspberry buns, fresh baked,

hard to get down without a sup o' tea, was a great pink

rubber (not erasers in those days). It was years before

I realised it was shaped as a giant pill, and all the paper

printed on one side with type-faced notes. I must have drawn

a zillion kingdoms, cottages and fairies, horses, flowers,

or scribbled poems; ancient Greeks meant nothing

to me then. Each time I made a mistake I'd take the pill

and erase. And when the buns were cool enough to eat,

we'd sit at the table after raising up a leaf and we'd talk

about my drawings: she'd ask what I wanted to be;

always I looked out the window: azalia forest flame.

Out of habit, I said midwife, what I meant was to be her:

Sister Rose, my grandmother, who never lost a baby

in all her career, who worked herself out of poverty but lost

a limb to cancer in the former workhouse of Fir Vale.

It took a few attempts for me to work out I was meant to

write all along. I write in pen: red; I find mistakes are best

left in. I'm not sure where the rubber went, I've never seen

another like it, they aren't made that way today; Sister Rose

who knew nothing healed better than kindness

with ears, raspberry buns and a nice cup of tea.

Tourists

by Rachel J. Fenton

I went back to the church

where we married, Saint Matthew's

in the City; the one where

someone left graffiti on the billboard

over: God's a hard

act to follow; the one that made the news

(world headlines) but we

chose it for the white sun streaming in

through those high

coloured slots like filtered spotlights

at a disco, and I sat

on a pew at the back and cried and tried

to remember why we

decided not to get hitched outside.

A couple of tourists

came in, I could tell by their clean

boots and backpacks

they'd just got off the plane, I entertain

the idea they thought

I was praying which was true in a way

and they smiled

sympathetically. You must understand

it seemed real at the time,

though I know now I was dreaming

else pretending to

with you at my side and I wonder,

with so many quakes,

why they built a church with a spire;

how it stays up.

I think of its shape as an angular spiral

like the crooked one

at Chesterfield I saw in passing on a train

as architectural DNA

or a tornado pulling God out of the sky,

and all that hidden space

inside; caves like those

underwater formed by chemical

corrosion of streams

I imagine in dreams I'm swimming down,

only there's never any room

for turning at the end, but a few people

have passed through

and taken pictures, samples, there

is no art work as such,

save the structure, no rudimentary

painting, pigment smeared

by hand, and some appear in fiction

(strictly literary texts),

Ondaatje's English Patient's one example

of several lying on the bed.

I'd like to know how to turn, I have the urge

to ask you. I can't see

your face in the dark. It's featureless.

Can we talk about this?

You're not asleep are you? I'm inspired

but it's late, the curtains,

white as icing, show the first signs;

one more night over. In

another hour the sun will take a slice

but, for now, it stutters

and as I wait for it to rise I consider travel;

going back to study,

to learn speleology, but I know you're just tired.

My Mother's Land

by Rachel J. Fenton

My father tilled the land
bought by my grandmother
in early March, I heard
from my bedroom the familiar

cut of loy and turn, then the fork
breaking up clods, tossing
them into the air like a great
moldewarp over his donkey

jacketed shoulder teasing
roots doing their best to look
alive: all clinging to the grim
end. And perching like a rook

on the sill, the smell of mould
and wood like an old woollen
glove up my nose, I'd see thrown
onto a heap last year's stems:

nettles the lot of them. Later,
he used a rotavator more
audibly to demonstrate slaughter
of earth; flicking a startled mole

as if to outer space; expanse
as its interior simultaneously collapsed.
Six hours it clung to trembling existence
with its billhook hands; it mattered

little that we only found five
worms to counter the knowledge that
it needed, in order to survive,
soil spaghetti in excess of its own weight.

We left it in the galvanised tin crate,
the nearest to a fortress we could make,
hoping to pick over the bones
in a month or so, but these too had gone

on the heap with all the other stalks
and critters that settled in the wrong
place. Come June, the lump-locked
drills were fine tilled and looking

up the shirts of brassicas, wind blowing
through carrot hair and in between, row
upon row of nettles: only growing
on fertile land. With the whorl

of motivated chickens a soundtrack,
I'd watch as my father plucked
the nettles from their plot
and dragged them out with bare hands.

Impotent (on the Christchurch earthquake)

by Rachel Fenton

The building
was grey, was the only thing making sense.

A spire
that had stood one hundred and forty years

fell in
a single second of the blackest day.

God's house,
wore its own mourning to drop to its knees;

doesn't point
a finger. Belief: second to nature

and children
go on swinging metal bats at empty

air whilst
balls, neon bright, go flaring by sucking

nothing in
their jet stream and behind, a row of cars,

open windowed,
play out the headlines on their radios.

Auckland (after William Blake)

by Rachel J. Fenton

I drive wrong way on one-way streets
along the harbour front and docks
and note the locals in bare feet
and tourists in white sports socks.

On every corner buskers sing
while people wait at traffic lights
and hear the crossing buzzer ring
but do not know their human rights.

Free of children, free of prams,
not for infants or the old
and the stores do not have ramps:
cripples left out in the cold

though one in seven claims to have
some form of disability.
Auckland's pride rests on the grave
of pioneer not charity.

Pack Thi Bags And Guh, Lass, Teck Thi Ook Nar (after Dylan Thomas)

by Rachel J. Fenton

Pack thi bags and guh, lass, teck thi ook nar
quietly, if thi fatha wecks, tha'll know.
Dun't darken this dooerstep, start thi car;

blinding me wi science, who d'yer think y'ar?
Tha wants t' ev some proper whuk t' show.
Pack thi bags and guh, lass, teck thi ook nar,
learn t' get thi ands black sumweer far
away, aht t' rooed, eeard darn low,
dunt darken this dooerstep, start thi car.

Am sick er folk like thee telling me ar
t' speyk, what t' seh, what t' write, un ow.
Pack thi bags and guh, lass, teck thi ook nar

Does tha think am simple, just cos er ar
a talk? Does tha think thar better? Daft cow,
dunt darken this dooerstep, start thi car.

Am norrevin thee meckin aht ah mar
thy histry; wiart rooits tha can't grow.
Pack thi bags and guh, lass, teck thi ook nar,
dunt darken this dooerstep, start thi car.