The following remarks are confidential & Girl #1
by Emily Berry
[ poetry - april 08 ]
The following remarks are confidential:
We always breakfast with the biographer. 'You eat like a bird!' my brother yelled once.
He has behavioural problems. Baby birds eat food regurgitated by their mothers;
the biographer does not eat like that. On Day One I showed him my grapefruit spoon;
it has a serrated edge. My father gave him a Mont Blanc fountain pen as a welcome
gift,
but I think he was more impressed by the spoon. 'It's almost like a knife!' he
said.
The biographer wrote: 'Breakfast, day one. They do not drink Arabica.'
I followed him round all morning. 'Robusta really is the inferior bean,' I concurred.
Sometimes we sit up in bed comparing moans; he swallows his until his lips curl.
I think that's because he went to boarding school. Sometimes the publishers call.
When he gets on the phone, he sweats; afterwards the right side of his face is
damp;
I like to monitor these subtle changes. Last night my father found us touching
legs.
'Go to your room!' he shouted. 'You shabby daughter.' 'You worthless excuse for
a story,'
the biographer added. They played cards to settle a debt. That day my mouth was
wetter than usual.
I asked the biographer to check. He used his tongue. 'This may affect the results,' he said.
Girl #1
Watch the way the night makes curves of her,
forgets the unperfect goodbye, catches and blackens
your turning smile. She's bad news kid, too careful
to spin on her heel like a vision, to be your fantasy
wife; only smoke kissed from her red lips and the ink
scratched from her pen knows the truth of what she is.
You were up nights, squeezing tears from your dry eyes
with church candles and The Smiths, picking melancholy
songs from your guitar, drawing a blade across your wrist.
Sometime soon she'd be turning out of herself like fruit
spooned from its skin; you waited, looked for it. Saw only red
speckling her breastbone, a nothing cleavage like a knuckle.
Did you regret this unbuttoning, down to her thin calves,
the all-awkward unpoetry... forget that we need to keep
secrets from dreams? You wrote down the way the night
makes curves of her, the swell of eyelids pink with frosting,
jagged shadows on her cheekbones from overdone mascara.
Years later you'll still be sure she had something about her.
