Two budgies & The flat of the hand
by Emily Berry
[ poetry - may 06 ]
Two budgies
‘The mango’s bone is like a cuttlefish’ I said proudly, domestic;
You looked on holding the pulp.
I remember the pull of your mouth on me certain mornings I made a
fuss enough;
your hair in my hands the colour of a penny.
I remember my scream and your sigh;
The same row of silence.
Once we saw two budgies in a chip shop window;
They need something to gnaw, you said.
We give and we take away;
Don’t say I invented romance where there wasn’t any.
The flat of the hand
Behind its carnivalesque and Moulin Rouge
and all the array of gaudy flesh
he found the real grime and edge of Soho
and took her down
into a basement close with breath
Are we all set? he might have brightly said;
or, don’t be so uptight, it’s only sex;
but she felt through her shoes the damp in the floor
and heard the murmur of men upstairs,
and the curl of magazine corners
thumbed by the moistness of whispers
hung in the air;
though when he showed her what he wanted
she tried to act like she didn’t care;
she thought of herself as a child with her mother
and the hard scrape of a brush through her hair.
After the first crack and the crush of flesh
she searched the flat of her hand for an answer
and found lines in the skin so deeply run
she could have fallen in.
I had to make my own boundaries, he told her.
What you need in your life is some discipline.
When all her possible selves had risen like welts,
she learnt, to her shame, she knew nothing;
and outside in the street he gave her his arm and she breathed,
seeing the mush from the market left in the gutter
and the stall holders preparing to leave.
