Title: Sport 33

Editor: Fergus Barrowman

Publication details: Fergus Barrowman, 2005

Part of: Sport

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Sport 33: Spring 2005

Michele Amas

page 31

Michele Amas

Standing

for Stephanie de Montalk

You can disguise the autobiographical
in the third person, she says
you can spy.

The Polish poet
reads to us
a narrative of injury,
under surveillance
a woman
a pelvis
a tiled bathroom floor
a pool of water.

She offers anatomical names
geographical observations
a landscape of pain like the Polish
roads made for German tanks.

There are storks in Poland
that nest on the roofs of houses,
they migrate, and return to the same
address to stand by chimneys
for warmth.

The Polish poet sways,
I worry for her feet
so long in standing
I want to sit down for her.

page 32

Daughter

The Steeple Chase

Get off my back
daughter
this is not dancing
you have sharpened your spurs.

Get off my back
you are giving me
the fingers
behind my head.

Get off my back
you have me pinned
against the ropes
the ref is on his tea break.

Get off my back
I am not carrying you
to my grave.

Get off my back
from up there you are
taller than me.

I will not race you
to the finish line
race you to freedom
I will not count down.

page 33

I am not your competitor
daughter
you signed me up
without my permission.

I am not your
leap frog.

Golden Delicious

She is sunny
she is sunny side up, my girl
running to meet me.
The other girls look lumpy
with their slumping shoulders
dyed hair and regrowth.
But my one is a beautiful apple
rolling down the drive
out past the school gates.

Blame

It is my fault
her toenails
her thighs
the hideous
hair on her arms.

My fault
she has too many books
it's making her schoolbag
fat.

page 34

Fat is my fault
I don't feed her
correctly, don't limit
her intake.

My fault
the failed marriage
I am simply
unlovable.

No money is my fault
what sort of grown-up
is an actress.

No brothers or sisters
my biggest fault
an unpardonable crime.

Babies

It's a feast or famine
with sperm
wouldn't you say?
Some days they can lap at your feet
other days are shorter.

I see fakes of babies
on hands
on shirt fronts
on benches
on car back seats

The old guy, toothless and cursing
wearing socks and jandals
is full of babies.

page 35

The college boy
has left babies
on his sheets this morning.

The Unborn Ones

The brothers and sisters
how stupid of them
to leave it up to me.

Stupid too
the German psychologist's
advice.

One child will now
bury her parents.

The brothers and sisters
salty baby mammals
have returned to the sea

turning into little grey whales.

Alliteration

Bullshit, she says
and I better bloody not be.
I watch her b's bounce off
the breakfast table,
stinging little orange and black
bumbles
stick to my hair.

page 36

The txt

Mum come upstairz
my throats 2 sore
2 call out 2 u.

In firemother red
I take the stairs
two at a time.