All My Mad Mothers E-Book

Jacqueline Saphra

• Herausgeber: Nine Arches Press
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 40

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Jacqueline Saphra's All My Mad Mothers explores love, sex and family relationships in vivacious, lush poems that span the decades and generations. At the heart of this collection of poems is the portrait of a mother as multitudes – as a magician with a bathroom of beauty tricks, as necromancer, as glamourous fire-starter, trapped in ever-decreasing circles and, above all else, almost impossible to grasp. With an emphasis on the cultures of the different times, we tread a tantalising tightrope between the confessional and the invented. These astute poems step assuredly from childhood's first exposures to the scratched records and unsuitable lovers of young womanhood, the slammed doors of daughters and sons, the tears and salted soups of friendships, and the charms of late love. All the time, incandescent and luminous as an everlasting lightbulb, at the heart of each of Saphra's poems is a delicate filament kicking out a heavy-duty wattage.

Leseprobe

All My Mad Mothers

All My Mad Mothers

Jacqueline Saphra

ISBN: 978-1-911027-20-1

Copyright © Jacqueline Saphra, 2017.

Cover artwork © detail from an untitled painting by Laurence Hope, photographed by Robin Saphra.

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, recorded or mechanical, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Jacqueline Saphra has asserted her right under Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

First published May 2017 by:

Nine Arches Press

PO Box 6269

Rugby

CV21 9NL

United Kingdom

www.ninearchespress.com

Printed in Britain by:

The Russell Press Ltd.

Nine Arches Press is supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

For my daughters

Contents

I

In the Winter of 1962 my mother

When I was a Child …

My Mother’s Bathroom Armoury

Eddie and the Pessaries

Sometimes my father fell asleep …

Sicily

My dark-haired mother was a necromancer …

The Sound of Music

My Australian stepfather stretched his own canvasses …

All My Mad Mothers

II

Crete, 1980

My first stepmother was blonde and clever …

Getting into Trouble

Things We Can’t Untie

Like a Fish Needs a Bicycle

Sometimes paint spilled and leaked …

Virginity

The Day My Cousin took me to the Musée Rodin

Volunteers, 1978

Hampstead, 1979

My mother shrank to the size of a small potted plant …

My Friend Juliet’s Icelandic Lover

Mile End

III

The World’s Houses

Chicken

My children were pierced and decorated …

Mother. Son. Sack of Salt.

Sometimes home was too close too the edge …

Leavings

When I think of you

What Time is it in Nova Scotia?

On certain occasions I juggled …

The Melting

The Doors to My Daughter’s House

The shop assistant observed …

IV

Reincarnation

The desk is an heirloom …

Cimex Lectularius

Kiss/Kiss

My father’s final wife had hair like my mother’s …

The Anchor

My lover was a celebrated poet …

Spunk

Soup

Everlasting

Since We Last Met

Late at night my mother …

Valentine for Turbulent Times

Charm for Late Love

Acknowledgements

About the Author & this book

I

In the winter of 1962 my mother

gathered up her baby her trembling soul

climbed into the Mini my father had bought

as penance for his bad behaviour drove

until she found herself on Hyde Park Corner

travelling round and round in shrinking circles

not sure how to execute the move outwards

into another lane never having been

properly taught how to make an exit

When I was a child my mother and father lived on different continents. I flew between them. When one was asleep, the other was awake and the telephone rang at all hours. You could never be sure what you heard. Certain phrases were often bent or broken in transit, complete sentences drifted away and were lost in the exchange. Those that arrived intact would generally mutate over time. Airmailed scrawls in permanent ink proved more dependable. Tightly trussed with rubber bands, unable to escape, the words waited immutably in the dark.

My Mother’s Bathroom Armoury

Beehive proppers backcomb teasers

Pinpoint pluck of fearful tweezers

Leak of mouthwash morbid flavour

Dutch-cap dusted snap-shut cover

Cutting edge of lady-razor

Glint of sin and lure of danger

Woman’s flesh a fading treasure

Braced for pain but honed for pleasure

Caked on flakes of failed concealer

Tell-tale cheeks of blusher-stealer

Crimson smear of lipstick wearer

Smile expander mouth preparer

Burning bleach a making-over

Smudged remains of caked mascara

Iron clamp of eyelash curler

Usual instruments of torture

Bath brimful of scented water

Mother’s tricks will pass to daughter

This year   next year   sometime   never

Eddie and the Pessaries

Eddie always carried a supply about his person, she told me – so enlightened for a man in 1953. They would fizz inside her quietly, a novel and acute sensation.

Eddie was her first, my mother said, much better than those later starving artist types: the Antipodean painter who left her for a skinny English master who died of pancreatic cancer; the playwright who, after many wives, developed schizophrenia; the up-and-coming violinist (somewhat younger) who had carpal tunnel and could barely move his wrists.

Every time she had a beer, some Eno’s fruit salt or a can of Orangina, she’d feel the fizz and think of Eddie: Eddie, who gave her joy and had a heart and took responsibility (think of the pessaries) but wouldn’t do: because as Uncle Leo rightly pointed out, he was a Goy, and Lebanese