Visceral

The condoms caused bladder infections,
the pills gave me headaches
now she is asking me which loop
I want, the one with arms that scrape the cervix as she inserts it
or the one that doesn’t hurt so much.

I focus on the dark-haired football player
drop-kicking a World Cup ball across my credit card
as I pay the receptionist,
and wonder if you will share the cost.

Pale-faced, the doctor turns away,
already showing her next patient in.
The petals bared in the print on the wall
crenulated, creamy; as if coated in mucus.

After

‘A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world’. (John 16:21)

If you plant a frangipani branch,
the stub will take root and grow in the
dry dust of memory, singing down
bones of an inevitable death.

Light follows shadow
as a silver fish scythes the sea,
refusing the net.
The sperm finds the egg.

It hurts, breaking apart
to render another human, whole,
but then his small mouth plucks your breast,
no sweeter pleasure, this joy after pain.

One year in

We argue all night, until I ask you to leave.

The next day we walk along the promenade.

I want to view the sea between trees, but

you pull me back, showing me wild jasmine.

We find a bench on the dune.

Below us, a family; a woman

smears sun-cream onto her mate’s face.

A brother and sister build a sandcastle.

You want this for us, you’ve said.

I know I must relinquish the search for a father,

I have lost him and survived,

but still the longing, an ache in the throat.

The sun glares from an aquamarine sky

and waves barrage the beach.

I watch the small girl wrap her legs

around her father’s waist, a limpet, not letting go.

Inheritance

I unravel the skein of lilac mohair
and slip a knot onto the hook,
painstakingly learn from the Youtube clip
how to chain and double crochet.

This wool I weave comes from my grandmother,
a clever woman belittled by her husband.
Working, I sense the solace she found here,
the gashes she knit together, as she stayed and did not leave.

Something delicate forms under my fingers,
like a lacy veil for a sad-eyed bride.
She made me a blanket, once,
strawberry pink, rough, I’ve kept it.

Her losses are not mine. They’re buried
beneath dry pines in Komga * cemetery.
She yellowed, died, in a crumpled bed of rage,
her window opening onto a summer garden, impervious.

But let her passing be a sampler

for the wounded child, watching from the corner.
I link my stitches, swallowing no love
like bile, or poison; craft a small healing.

* small town in the Eastern Cape, SA

From the Lighthouse

The red rail ran rigid around the lighthouse deck.

Below, the sea flurried fierce rocks.

I saw a lone tree, storm survivor, stand severe,

its burnt trunk blackened against the foam.

The guide had warned the group

of danger near the edge,

each adult was to hold the hand of a child.

My son’s grip was a gull’s, longing to fly.

We braced against the cold.

The transparent panes of the huge lamp,

frail-layered in the cloudy light,

belied its powerful night-time pulse,

speaking to ships in the dark.

Threshold

From the bar at the pier’s end

they saw the moon’s pale hands

splay across the sea as if it were a piano,

phrasing waves into a nocturne.

He held his beer glass

steady on the high counter,

as a breeze blew, and her shawl tassels

fluttered against her mouth.

She’d got a raise, she told him.

He was glad, he said.

She watched the night fisherman

step into the shallows, cast his line.

City lights caught

the crescent of the bay,

completing the regretful curve

of ships leaving harbour.

Along the beach

small ordinary fires

warmed the dark.

Free

I lay full-bodied on the beach

and watched my son front the waves.

Cool sky restrained

the sun, a hoop of yellow.

I saw him run, a sandpiper, past

the bathing area, hammocked

by two lifeguard’s poles, towards

fiercer waters, cross-hatched.

Calling him back, my arm stretched

out into a line of warning

I became my father,

Daedalus, afraid for Icarus.

Still, the wild sea mirrored

a naked boy in me, flying.