Claire Crowther & Chris McCabe
June 2009
CC
Sonnet for skirts
‘When bitterness ousts us I’ll remember THE DRESS, your shifts and your tunics.
You’ll think of my fear of your need to co-ordinate.’ ‘Wrong version. Dead
love is divided more like a train so seats can’t be accessed
from both ends.’ ‘But style drains us. Our words just breed wordiness.’
‘But remember the sleeper, when we took words off?’
CMC
Strawberries
A dress sent in installments for a Summer, a look that was in at a wedding with no guests
(a coathanger swings a swan mannequin).
All clothes before were Druid’s suits snagged in sheets, threaded to the skin by arthritic puppeteers.
All suits before were Ragmen rehearsing in Dressing Room 6, Goths with collapsible suitcases.
(A red garter tourniquets the before & after a railroute that links the registry & estuary)
a train that divides the just-wed & not that declares NO LOST PROPERTY (as it goes)
and if there was : the still wet strawberries
CC
The puppeteer
That old craze for hot tubs! We looked down from the balcony where we were warm and naked and saw a knife poised
above a woman lying under a coat asleep. We all shouted ‘No.’ Our talk of experiments to detect
the future of the universe ended. The hand stayed up and waved, a fisherman pointing to his catch.
One tress of strawberry blonde hair swelled out of a collar as a tendon might protrude from a slipping cuff.
CMC
Telescopes
The ring slips a finger you once thought was Up Yours, slips like a head-dress over a thimble bride’s neck, shrieks of slo-mo NOs at the misquoted chat-up lines – a kneading of tongues to eat their own bones.
An Apocalypse scurries under the dresser – each scratch woofers a Kraken’s itch – a tail is not a talon : a mouse’s nest, wreath-petit, made from Christmas hats, tinsel, shredded brochures & seashells.
Stripped off our T-shirts logo’d POLYMORPHOUS, uncorked a deep red in white boiler suits. Pressed the suit to my chest, the collars pegged with sparrows.
The telescope showered us a YES – warts & aortas (You said) was the art of words. If we accepted each other's our names would be printed.
I took your finger : not a hand : it was a catch : we could have seen the stars if everyone flicked off a switch. Our Open Skies policy was writ. We shook them off at the cashpoint. Wild cats glared from the demolition site.
CC
Lens
Human, a tiny country slung from a pole of grass. Its skin of water nests and suspends the sun.
Now a group happens more and more: exchanging names, admitting it has no arms:
but a catch: cannibalism. ‘Drop in, cool single,’ urges the ditch. ‘Fall. Fall. Fall.’
CMC
The Fall
Mark E. Smith’s moshpit meshes ‘76 eggshell blondes with the nit-crochet generation. You have woken up with Fall sound!
No more shots at the Astoria. But loneliness petri fies : was it a lens or a dish (the pills, the drink) in soft focus?
Name me a happiness: You said : the B-sides. ENTER the Boy, the stresses & Tombliboos, the nightshifts & changes. Then his voice! He thought scarecrows were laid-off puppets
and us just slightly above. The tresses and tunics ruffled our sleep patterns
until we woke up : to capture this