Bird Sisters E-Book

Julia Webb

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

Seitenzahl: 39

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

'Bird Sisters exerts a powerful hold, as if to read it is to be haunted by things one half-remembers.' – Moniza Alvi 'All is strange or estranged in fact, but it is articulated in poems of supple inventive concentration. In that sense Bird Sisters is a book that casts deep shadows.' – George Szirtes Julia Webb's Bird Sistersis a surreal journey through sisterhood and the world of the family via the natural world. Fascinated by the 'otherness' of things, her poems expose places and relationships that are not always entirely comfortable places to exist. Many of them feature transformations of some kind – both real and metaphorical: a woman wears a dress of live bees or becomes a bird and family members turn into owls and sparrows. In exploring the ways in which both adults and children are casually cruel to one another, often within a mythological framework, Julia Webb blurs the boundaries between fairy tale and reality. These families are terrifying in their complexity and dysfunction, yet utterly compelling and convincing and with dark undercurrents of humour that ensure the poems are never bleak.

Leseprobe

Bird Sisters

Bird Sisters

Julia Webb

ISBN: 978-1-911027-05-8

Copyright © Julia Webb

Cover artwork © Julia Webb

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.

Julia Webb 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 2016 by:

Nine Arches Press

PO Box 6269

Rugby

CV21 9NL

United Kingdom

www.ninearchespress.com

Printed in Britain by:

The Russell Press Ltd.

For Natty with love.

In memory of my mum Dawn Carol

who encouraged me to keep writing.

Contents

Sisters (part i)

Bee Mornings

Feather Factory

Family Values

Snow

Winter at Daniel’s Hole

The Piano Lesson

Sisters (part ii)

A Bird Inside

Quiet Man Norfolk

Night Feed

Sun Sister

Night Sickness

Our Father as a Horse

The Trap

Definitions (i)

From the Same Cloth

Counterpoint

Lent

Garden

After identifying your body

Water

Yare Song

Rain

The Drunkenness of Noah

Definitions (ii)

Thetford Forest

Something About the Light

The Callers

Gin Fox

Moldewarpe

Sparrow Sister

Oak

My owl sister mistakes me for a mouse

My owl sister pays me a visit

Clearing Out Mum

After cleaning out your house

Visiting Time

Operation

Maternity Ward

The Miracle

Breakdown

I have forgotten my password to you

no one speaks of you

This is how to fall

Bee Dress

Tickets to the Circus

Acknowledgements

About the Author & this book

“I am not averse to torching a place that is not habitable (so long as no one is inside). I will uncover

a use for the ashes.”

– C.D. Wright

Sisters (part i)

i.

This sister is the bones of the outfit,

she is the stuff that keeps the body up,

she is dem bones, dem bones,

she is calcified connective tissue,

she is femur, tibia, ulna, ribs.

ii.

This sister is the perfect scrunch

of English Rose,

all delicate petal curl, subtle pinks,

she opens her smile up to the sun.

This sister is a fuzzy stamen

with a dust of pollen,

she is the heady waft of perfume

begging you to bring your face down to her,

to bring your face right down.

iii.

She is the one with the hair just-so,

the handkerchief skirt hems, the well-cut clothes,

and on birthdays she gets the family all together –

we line up for photos that never looked posed,

and how she laughs at being vegetarian

but each Christmas allowing herself a little meat.

She is the one with the dainty features, the cutesy nose

the one they look for when you enter the room,

and the way they hang on her words makes you nauseous

but you can’t say it, because she was the one

who watched out for you behind the shops and in the playground.

She is the one with the amicable divorce

and the books on cake decorating –

all those fiddly womanly things you have no patience for,

and she is the one who sat up all night in the crematorium

plaiting flowers into your mother’s hair.

iv.

This sister reads Nietzsche,

her hair is twisted into bunches like tiny horns,

she makes abstract art with fur and feathers,

she likes to collect things from gutters and pavements,

and her eyes have that sparkle you were scared of as a kid.

v.

This sister is the bee

and we are the nectar,

she is drawing us in

with her persistent buzzing,

her talk of the hive mind,

her tremble dance.

Bee Mornings

The bees that sleep inside me

fill my mind with buzz.

We are Nectar they say,

we are Wax and Cone,

we are of Bee but not of Bee.

In the morning I look at my stripes

under the covers, something strange

is taking place inside me,

my tongue has turned to fur,

my head hums like something electric.

Yet by breakfast you would never know:

I fidget the toast around the plate,

it feels quite wrong

to eat honey on bee mornings.

Any minute I might take flight.

Feather Factory

We kiss by the side of the feather factory,

the stench of singed wings

fills our noses and mouths.

We are nest-bound – tongues entwined,

pockets full of Swan Vestas and Player’s Number Six,

your nylon trousers spark to the rub.

Later the birds will haunt us:

their feathers will float around our heads,

pillow our eyes against the brightness of the day.

Family Values

Sun Daddy believed that the world was small

When the world knocked at his door