Dressing for the Afterlife E-Book

Maria Taylor

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

Seitenzahl: 37

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

Dressing for the Afterlife is a diamond-tough and tender second collection of poems from British Cypriot poet Maria Taylor, which explores love, life, and how we adapt to the passage of time. From the steely glamour of silent film-star goddesses to moonlit seasons and the ghosts of other possible, parallel lives, these poems shimmy and glimmer bittersweet with humour and brio, as Taylor conjures afresh a world where Joan Crawford feistily simmers and James Bond's modern incarnation is mistaken for an illicit lover. Consistently crisp and vivid, these poems examine motherhood, heritage and inheritance, finding stories woven in girlhood's faltering dance-steps, the thrum of the sewing-machine at the end-days of the rag trade, or the fizz and bubble of a chip-shop fryer. And throughout, breaking through, is the sense of women finding their wings and taking flight - "and her wings, what wings she has" - as Taylor's own poems soar and defiantly choose their own adventures.

Leseprobe

Dressing for the Afterlife

Dressing for the Afterlife

Maria Taylor

ISBN: 978-1-913437-01-5

eISBN: 978-1-913437-02-2

Copyright © Maria Taylor, 2020

Cover artwork: © Anthony Gerace

https://a-gerace.com

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.

Maria Taylor 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 September 2020 by:

Nine Arches Press

Unit 14, Sir Frank Whittle Business Centre,

Great Central Way, Rugby.

CV21 3XH

United Kingdom

www.ninearchespress.com

Nine Arches Press is supported using public funding by Arts Council England.

Contents

Prologue

She Ran

I Began the Twenty-Twenties as a Silent Film Goddess

And there she was in the shrunken apartment like Joan Crawford, toy dog on her lap

The Floating Woman

Sand Memoir

Then I Reconsidered Prayer

Aubade with Question Mark

Moon in Gemini

Everything is a fight between winter and spring

Ophelia

The Bee-Bird

Awake in His Castle

Ghosting

Loop

Dear Birthday

The Fields

Head of a Baby

Poem in Which I Lick Motherhood

What It Was Like

The Pavilion

Unfinished Business

Also-ran

Friday At The Moon

Hypothetical

Tracing Orion

The Boyfriend

Learning to Love in Greek

Ante

Christening

The Audience

Learning the Steps

Ferry

Songbird

The Distance

My Stranger

Choose Your Own Adventure

How to Survive a Disaster Movie

The Vale

Mr Alessi Cuts the Grass

Not About Hollywood

Gangsters

Problems with the Idiom

Anna of The Fisheries

Yiayia’s House

Fylingdales

Don vs. the Summer of Love

Role Model

Wearing Red

Ragtrade

Aviary

The Horse

Woman Running Alone

Acknowledgements and Thanks

About the author and this book

Prologue

To dress for the afterlife,

step into the precise moment

you ended a former existence

and zipped yourself into the unknown.

Choose a wedding outfit,

a pair of overalls, an invisibility cloak,

or the national dress of a country

you have never visited before.

This is how you must learn

to breathe again.

She Ran

I took up running when I turned forty.

I opened my front door and started running

down a filthy jitty and past my parents’ flat.

I ran through every town in which I’d ever lived.

I ran past all my exes, even a few crushes

who sipped mochas and wore dark glasses.

I ran in a wedding dress through scattered confetti

and was cheered by the cast of Star Wars.

I ran through the screaming wind, rain and cloud.

I ran through my mother’s village and flew past

armed soldiers at the checkpoint. I ran past

my grandparents and Bappou’s mangy goats

with their mad eyes and scaled yellow teeth.

I ran straight through Oxford and Cambridge,

didn’t stop. I saw a naked man in Piccadilly Gardens.

I ran through high school and behind the gym

where gothy teens smoked and necked each other.

I passed an anxious mother pushing a pram

and a baby that kept throwing out her doll.

Seasons changed; summer turned into autumn,

I couldn’t get as far as I wanted.

The lights changed. My ribs, my flaming heart

and my tired, tired body burned.

I Began the Twenty-Twenties as a Silent Film Goddess

On the first of January I threw away my Smartphone

and wrote a letter to my beau in swirling ink.

I bobbed my hair, wore a cloche hat and shimmied

right into town for Juleps. I became Clara.

I became Louise. When I became a vamp, the boys

fell dead at my feet, I threw petals over their heads.

I dined on prosperity sandwiches and sidecars,

leaving restaurants with a sugar-rimmed mouth.

In summer I was a night-blooming flower.

By autumn I was a hangover. Winter made me

a Wall-Street Crash. Talking pictures were my ruin.

At last I had a voice but no-one wanted to hear.

Forgotten sisters. Oh Vilma, oh Norma, oh Mae.

A musty headdress of peacock feathers. Defiant silence.

And there she was in the shrunken apartment like Joan Crawford, toy dog on her lap