Marks and Sparks by Rachel Dealtry

Character: Female, Northern, Fifties

I pick up the plastic globe off the chest of drawers; one of our grandchildren put it there. I notice as I lift it up the circle of clean polished oak that it leaves behind. I am a slut in the house.

BEAT

Housework to me is like the corn on my left foot - extremely painful, but nevertheless needs dealing with eventually. I study the globe for a while and realise that Ireland is only a tiny fingernail away from here, a tiny little fingernail away from me. Yet I am here and he is there and that fingernail between us feels as vast as the Sahara desert, and all the chocolate teacakes in the world will not make me feel any better about that.

Some days, I stand in the queue at Marks and Sparks and I wonder where it all went wrong. I look at the other women in there and I want to scream, it’s because no-body says what they are really thinking or feeling. I have very violent thoughts towards the counter clerks and I put them aside because it is not appropriate for a woman of my age to have thoughts like this.

I’m looking down the toilet and I can see yellow brown urine frothing in the bottom of the pan. I've told William a million times to flush it, but he doesn't listen to me. I walk over to the sink and fetch his toothbrush, his is the blue one, everything that William owns has been shopped for by me. I take it over to the toilet and I dip it into the froth, I then walk over to the sink and I place it neatly back into the holder.

William is unaware of my habitual urine dipping.

William is generally unaware of me.

I catch a glimpse of myself in the full length mirror and I remove my dressing gown, I look at myself good and hard. I like the curve that my spine makes at the small of my back and my      breasts are still in good shape considering what they have been through. It’s the middle bit that disgusts me, the way it hangs over the top of my pants. I grab it with both hands and consider slicing it off. If I sliced it off I will look younger again. I don’t feel like this, I don’t feel like this woman looking back at me. My body no longer fits together with my mind. 

This is painful.

Every Wednesday we eat haddock, boiled potatoes and peas. We generally eat in silence or we discuss our children whom we no longer gain pleasure from. I then go and do the washing         up and William settles himself down in front of the telly.

Today, I wipe down the sides, dry my hands with the tea towel and go to join him. His thick rimmed glasses are sitting awkwardly on his face. I am wearing a new floral dress which William does not notice. He’s engrossed in some quiz programme. I turn to him, very slowly, I take a deep breath and I say:

‘Would you like to see my vagina?’

BEAT

William just stares at the television set and his glasses begin to steam over. I get up and walk towards the window, I pull the curtains across and I lift up my dress to reveal my white cotton undies.

‘Want to see it?’

Silence prevails

‘Do you want to?’

The telephone starts to ring and William’s patting his forehead with a handkerchief. He gets up . . . muttering that it might be one of the children and I feel the blood rushing towards my face ‘LEAVE IT’.

He looks terrified and slumps back into the settee. I walk over to him and block his view of Countdown. I’m willing him to touch me. I’m begging him to reach out to me. A minute goes by and it feels like an hour. I do a one hundred and eighty degree turn and I run, I run to the bedroom and I slam the door nearly off the hinges. (Building) I lay down on the bed and I dream of being in Ireland, I dream of being with him and my body becomes ageless and my thoughts become fire and I realise that I CAN-NOT GO ON LIKE THIS. It has to stop.

BEAT

Tomorrow, whilst doing the weekly shop, I will pop a brand new toothbrush into my basket and when I get home I’ll just replace the old one.

~ END ~

Sestinas explained

For anyone who was blown away by Caity's poem 'On Being Single. Again.' (last post), here is her explanation of how to construct a sestina...

The Sestina

Poetry I am told feels a bit alien to a lot of people, and the idea of using a structured form seems pointless and unnecessarily difficult. It won’t be something everyone comes back to  - but after explaining what it is, I have used the poem I have posted as an example you might want to try :)

The sestina is a 6 stanza plus ‘envoi’ poem. ‘Envoi’ in this case is a sort of three line recap. You don’t have to rhyme, you can pick your number of syllables per line  - your meter…. Eg pentameter is five ‘units’ of rhythm, and a ‘unit’ of rhythm can be for example a pair of stressed and unstressed syllables

(di-dum di-dum di-dum di-dum di-dum being Iambic Pentameter because of the order of stressed and unstressed syllables)

The poem only uses 6 ‘end words’ – literally the last word of each line - repeated in a set formula pattern, and uses the words in the same order as the first Stanza (although this can vary) in the last 3 lines . 

The order of the end words is set in that pattern - use numbers 1-6 if that makes more sense to you. 

Using my poem as an example the end words are as follows (which you sort of hope people don’t notice)

A         cigarette

B          one

C         spent

D         fire

E          close

F          set

F          set

A         cigarette

E          close

B          one

D         fire

C         spent

C         spent

F          set

D         fire

A         cigarette

B          one

E          close

E          close

C         spent

B          one

F          set

A         cigarette

D         fire

D         fire

E          close

A         cigarette

C         spent

F          set

B          one

           

B          one

D         fire

F          set

E          close

C         spent

A         cigarette

AB       cigarette, one

CD       spent fire

EF        end set

           

It is almost like a spiral of words (if that is a helpful image) and the tricks are

• firstly to chose your ‘end words’ quite carefully, using words that have several meanings  - like set, which has the most dictionary defined meanings I learned, and or words that have homophones (one/won, vain/vein. Whine/wine which are permissible variants to the form )
• you could use end words which have a some overlapping or connected meaning – spent /end/close,
• very careful use of caesura (pauses using full stops/commas/colons) and lines. By this I mean that for a poem to make sense you don’t read it line by line, you read it grammatically as you would a piece of prose. This way the end word don’t seem too obvious (or at least that’s the aim)…

so you could read a piece of poetry like this,

with commas at the end of every line,

and then you’ll find that nothing goes amiss,

but you might have a verse which doesn’t rhyme.

Or

You could read a piece of poetry. Like

this. Not commas at the end

of every line. And then you’ll find

that nothing goes

amiss; but you might have

a verse that doesn’t rhyme.

You are still able to follow the meaning. The example above shows how that can impact the way you write, the sound and the sense (it doesn’t mean I think its good – or not good  - or that these lines make sense, its just an example of what to think about )

And if you do give yourself a syllable limit (iambic pentameter being the fave for many because it is naturally very close to normal English speech pattern) there’s likely to be more rhythm and completeness in your poem – but not always

There are other types of formal structure like a villanelle, A pantoum, Sonnet,

all of which are also shorter – if that sounds preferable

The discipline of writing in a formal way actually helped in writing this I think, and the structure definitely came first, which sounds like it might be artificial but it still conveys a sense and meaning ( mostly) and all language we use is confined in rules of syntax grammar and spelling – so think of it as an extension of that.

In this poem I thought of the end words first, wanted it keep it mostly easy but then thought I better give myself something more jarring to see if it flowed – so threw ‘cigarette’ in because I had the image of a spiral like a spiral of cigarette smoke. That made me think of a conversation I’d had once in a coffee bar and that lead to thinking of bits and pieces of other peoples relationship endings  - this is not autobiographical, and not meant to be an angsty outlet, but this – and any poem – is meant to be about distilling an idea/ideas into a poetic form to create an emotional resonance with the reader and using the form to help in that – otherwise write prose. A sestina just gives you a frame to hang it on. I had to edit this poem and double check on grammar and line breaks – and I think there are still some dodgy moments – but it felt like going through the task really helped me think about line and form generally – and was well worth doing for me for that reason alone.

sestina time

Sestina On Being Made Single. Again.

 With fingers lifted at a cigarette,

your lips part; slow, deliberate. And one

by one the dreams we had are all but spent,

as ash which falls - betrayed - to death, by fire.

The plastic cup, half filled with coffee close

to cold, is nearer to your heart, and set

down with more tender touch than I am: Set

aside. Draw on the butt of cigarette

again, or move to speak if you must close

this door. I’d rather that you’d shout out one

venomous, sulphur- stream of fire,

- and rage until all bitterness is spent –

 

than smother me with silence. We have spent

years arriving at this ending. I set

my heart on you; on stoking up your ‘fire

of passion’. You. A man in cigarette

pants; dirty. Shirt; a Che Guevara one.

Remembering you then, too far to close

the distance, too long ago, to get close

to you now. Reclaiming all the time spent

in snuffing out the spark, splitting the one-

ness into two, is futile. We are set,

now, on this path. And like your cigarette

my hope is all consumed today in fire.

 

You stare at me. And I with rapid-fire

of words unspoken, untumbling, close

my eyes and breathe your smoking cigarette.

In aspiration I am all now spent

out. Resign myself again to being set

up on the shelf; and ready meals for one;

 

or hitching up my skirts for fumbled one-

night-stands; imagining lost cats so fire-

men come - my only company; and set

ups with Toms, Harrys – Dicks all, far too close

for comfort. All too far away. I’ve spent

too long embraced here by your cigarette

 

smoke. That cigarette that takes me back one

lifetime. One spent, dulled, burnt out, lifeless fire

close to its end, and it will not again be set.

 

That's When I'm Happy

There was just the bedroom left upstairs.  I think we had left it till last because it seemed the most personal.  Claire had helped me sort through the clothes in the wardrobe.  Most of it we packed into the various plastic sacks that had collected in the porch.  Mum would have approved of her things being used to try to help others have a better life.  She didn’t have a huge array of clothes, but they were good quality.  Soft fabrics, bright colours, patterns that let slip her joy of life.   There were a few pieces we kept, shared between us.  Some we might wear, some we just couldn’t bear to let go.  Her jewellery, her shoes, her scarfs.  Mostly we sorted in silence, but held up items and smiled and occasionally “Do you remember…”  Sometimes we hugged each other and cried.

The piles grew – charity, keeping, bin.  Mike brought up tea now and then, brushing my hair with the flat of his hand as he set the cups down on the bedside table.  He was wearing his old jeans and at first the thick dark jumper he always wore when he worked in the garage or garden.  As the afternoon wore on and he grew warm in the spring sunshine, I saw it lying on the garden table and one of his old tour t-shirts saw the light of day.

“I’ll start taking these downstairs.” Claire picked up two of the sacks and paused in the doorway.  “You okay finishing off?”

I nodded.   I was sat on the bed now.  “I’ll just go through these drawers and I’ll give you a hand.”

I adopted the method I used at home when I was sorting out.  I emptied the contents onto the bed and rummaged through.  It must have been a while, judging by the dust in the corners, since mum had sorted through the drawer, but there wasn’t a great deal in there.  An open pack of tissues with one or two missing; a couple of biros, one leaking blue ink onto my fingers.  I wiped them with one of the tissues; they had holly leaves printed around the edge and I recognised them as a pack I had put into a Christmas stocking I had made up for her the year before last when she had come to us for the holiday.  There was a paper clip, a used emery board, that sort of thing.  Most of it I threw into the rubbish sack, though I put the tissues to one side.  I was going to keep them in my handbag; they smelt of her perfume.

The little book had caught my eye, but I left it till last.  It was only about six or seven inches high and maybe four or five wide.  It had a pretty cover, ruched fabric, a soft pale lilac.  I couldn’t recall seeing it before, but the pages were yellowed with age.  Thick pages with a scalloped edge.

“That’s when I’m happy!”  Mum’s hand inscribed the inside of the front cover. 

The first entry was dated more than forty years ago.  I would have been four.  I settled back against the pillows, the late afternoon sun warming my legs and feet.

“Watching my little girl on the swing, she’s really pushing her legs backwards and forwards.”

Then a few days later

“Charlotte has just picked me a daffodil.  I love to see her playing in the sunshine.”

I turned the pages.   Most were miniature diary entries of trivial, everyday things mum found pleasure in.  Finding a pound note in her purse, a robin in the garden, or funny little things Claire or I had said over the years.

“Christmas isn’t all about vegetables you know mummy!”

Some were lists – the moon in the sky during the day; hedgehogs; a purring cat; the sound of children playing, thrown over from the school playground two streets away; the greenness of trees against a blue, blue sky; washing blowing in the summer breeze – nothing extraordinary, but I found them so.  I knew mum had loved spring flowers and bird song and the smoothness of newly plastered walls, but I never realised they made her soul sing.

I turned another page – “There was a fox in the garden this morning!” It was dated for my sixth birthday.  I remembered the moment of opening the curtains in mum’s room and there, staring up at the window, startled by the movement out of the corner of its eye, was a thin, young fox.  It turned and hurried across the garden, leaping over the low fence made of chicken wire at the bottom, and then disappearing into the undergrowth of Mrs McKenna’s garden next door.

I closed my eyes remembering how mum and I had hugged each other with excitement about The Birthday Fox!  I had forgotten all about him, but the pleasure of that moment with mum had come flooding back reading that entry in her untidy writing.  Not just the memory of the fox, but the special feeling of a lovely shared experience.  I closed my hand around the little book.

I felt someone sit on the bed close to me, but I struggled to open my eyes.  Sleep had been evasive in the last few days, but now I had found it, it didn’t want to let me go.

“In the midst of sadness, happiness is all around.” 

My eyes opened.  “Mum?”

Mike took my hand.  “Charlotte, it’s me, it’s ok.  I’ve brought you a cup of tea.  We should get going soon.”

I nodded, sat up slowly and took the mug from him.  “I’ll come down.”

He took the mug and placed it down on the bedside table beside the two half empty ones from earlier. He wrapped his arms around me and I sank into him, holding him tightly, grateful for him being who he was.

Shall I take this rubbish?”  He gestured to the bag.  I wiped my eyes and nodded again.

“Are these to go?” he picked up the pack of tissues and the book that lay next to me.

“No – I’ll be needing both of those.”  I said.

 

Happiness

Drumming feet of early morning blackbirds on the roof and gas whistle of kettle wake me. The familiar and comforting smell of locked up musty caravan comforts me as I stretch awake in the nylon sleeping bag.

I am ten years old. I sit on the caravan steps; face upturned to the speckled blue sky and I feel the beginning of the day’s warmth on my eyelids. On my lap I nurse a half eaten cereal bowl of sodden cornflakes. Behind me the open door in the darkened interior where my mother folds up blankets and my father asks where my mother has hidden ... Well, take your pick. I place the bowl on the concrete slab and listen to the sounds of the awakening families on field 5. I hear the dull, muffled sound of footsteps walking on tin. Radios sing to excited children who draw back curtains in anticipation of the beach.  

Hens scratch around and strut on the grass in front of me and a far off cock calls them reminding them not to stray too far from home. The metal bars of the steps cut into me now and reluctantly I leave the sun’s rays and go inside.

Later, on Talybont beach, stick thin and berry brown, my brother and I career over the waves of stones left behind by the tides. For once no one looks at my thinness and, instead in passing, I hear an old woman exclaim ‘Ooh isn’t she brown!’ At the ice-cream stall – an old caravan marooned on the beach - we buy a rare treat. 99s for ourselves and other brother and sister. We scuttle our way back over the pebbles, melting ice-cream dripping stickily down wrists onto bare legs.

We have no money and I am envious of those families who eat crisps and drink coke with their packed lunch;  have ‘treats’,  whilst we ravenous from swimming in waves, wolf down the plain cheese and tomato sandwiches and digestive biscuits [ in between moaning] and drink diluted orange squash. My mother explains once that we don’t have the treats other families have, because we don’t just have one week’s holiday and, as this makes sense, I accept this.

The screech and roar of an overhead low-flying pilotless plane from Llanbedr airfield is incongruous with the beach setting, but it’s a familiar sound and an indicator of good weather. It’s a sound that anchors me to Talybont beach. Behind me the patchwork quilt of hills fold downwards to the pebbled dunes and either way stretches to infinity. Snowdonia and the Llyn Peninsula one way and the distant shores of Aberdovy the other.

I am eternally grateful to you Gwynedd for your coastline, your seagulls and your harbours and your wild hills and mountains. Here you have taught me what it is to really love and to feel that I am home. There is no other place where all my pasts and presents are as one. I can track my existence on your timeless trajectory. Days, weeks, years spent here have left me living in a geological, metaphorical, mental no man’s land, hovering somewhere between wherever I am and where I want to be. I am in love with a place that makes me wish I could be with it as I would a ‘beloved’. I am not Welsh yet I understand it when they talk of ‘hiraeth’ the yearning; the sickening longing for home.


Jenny

Snow Piece

Snow Piece, finally...and Midsummer Night's Dream was a hit!  I missed the last meeting but it looks like everyone is writing pieces on happy?

That was her name for me.

It’s what she called me during that time of emergence lived some thirty odd years ago.  Admittedly, I was much, much younger then, more child than woman…but I can still remember feeling oddly flattered by the comforting comparison.  She would, on occasion, laughingly, (and I perceived), lovingly, taunt me by attempting to make me one with that enduring storybook character.   You know her… we all know her…that iconic, pure, raven haired beauty, arms outstretched, surrounded by all of nature …dainty fingers held aloft for songbirds cheerfully flitting about her…

A cultural archetype made accessible to a twenty first century audience drawn from one man’s imagination…made so unforgettable that I still recall the colors of her gown…the soprano voice…the fairness of her skin.  Her entire persona stood for and embodied genuine goodness, fairness and beauty.    And then there was the story...the whole service thing... the taking care of…the making sense of chaos…the finding home and family.  More importantly, there were the men to care for…aah, and music and song, and silliness and laughter, and a forest in which to frolic, and there was temptation even, and the triumph over evil, and well…lest we forget…a “and they all lived happily ever after” fairy tale ending.   The naming allowed me, even encouraged me, for quite a long time, to maintain a hold on the inane belief that I too, had been, and might forever remain, as someone at least partially pure, hopeful, untouchable, an innocent, a believer in goodness and happy endings.

I can still taste those early days…and smell them…and hear them.  I remember yards of white cotton lace against tall mullioned windows…  glowing oak floorboards… lavender fragrance emanating from polished furniture, artful objects, (still meaningful to me at the time), buffed and carefully placed… smooth, cold, grayish veined marble atop a carved walnut hutch…vanilla icing lapping at the sides of velvety chocolate cakes laid upon antique crystal pedestals…a beloved child’s footfall running through the Doctor’s old house.  A belief…a ridiculous holding out in the name of goodness in support of one pure perseverance that there could be no real enemies…not yet…not back then…only those imagined.   All was goodness.  Purity prevailed. 

Ice melted into blue rivers and the waters edged their way cutting deep patterns across the undulating fields.  I recall once standing on that blessed piece of land, face and hands and toes frozen, watching a dancing veil obscure nature’s familiar silhouette.  And then, one day, while none of us were looking, the brooding wind seeped in through the gap of the heavy front door, bringing sickness, and with it hopelessness, and the residue of exhaustion, like a covering of smothering ash, began to blanket our world.

The dimming of the early years dragged on…effervescence and hopefulness replaced by teeth clenching, mind numbing, relentless emptiness, boredom, and an overwhelming sense of loss.  I did what I was supposed to do didn’t I?  I scrubbed the floors.  I prepared the tea.  I kept the schedules.  I loved.  I cared for.  I believed.  I even found a way to wrap my broken entirety around the first gentle unraveling…yet even so, finally they found me…and those wicked weavings began to poke holes in me… and the last remnants of the pretend world I had once taken refuge in, began to melt away.

Now, years later, one can simply Google the word to watch hundreds of icy blue and white images pop up on a screen.   I wonder now, looking back, if she, that woman I had loved, who stood larger than life, my once great giant of a friend, had been meaning to refer to that lovely, soft, innocent, tranquil, healing kind of white…or rather, that painfully bright lose your sight kind of white.   Perhaps in her wisdom she saw both.

Karen

Growing Away From Me

It was Kathy who gave me the idea.  We’d met as we always do on a Wednesday morning at The Merrie England Coffee shop.  She’d ordered something frothy which possibly only became liquid two millimetres before the bottom of the cup, a muffin and a slice of cake.  I’d stared behind the teenager serving me at the confusion of abuses of the English or Italian language on the chalkboard which were used to describe their drinks and opted as always for a “A pot of English tea”.  Instead of the usual chatter about husbands, jobs and kids she’d announced as we sat down that she had something important to tell me but it was in the strictest secrecy.  I can’t imagine why she felt the need to add that. Who was I going to tell? Richard? As sweet as he is and as much as I love him he has no interest in anything Kathy says.  Nor anything I say if I’m honest but when I’m telling him something about me he’ll utter an occasional grunt, stray fart or harrumph to indicate interest or surprise.  I’m not sure when I moved from lead actress to background artist in the story of his life.  He views Kathy as a shallow and trivial person and can’t understand why I give her any more than the time of day.  He’s partly right.  She is a shallow and trivial person and for me that has always been what attracts her to me. 

 

Her big news turned out to be that she was having an affair.  I was a little disappointed and almost completely unsurprised.  It’s not that she’s some sort of strumpet but she is, thanks to a diet largely of muffins and cake, unsubtly curvaceous in a way most men would love and is very pretty and witty.  More importantly, her husband, Pete, is a deeply unattractive man in both looks and personality.  Their marriage and first child were the result of a prophylactic malfunction in the third week of a relationship which Kathy regularly assures me otherwise wouldn’t have reached its one month anniversary.  She was particularly pleased that at thirty eight the man she had become involved with was only twenty one.  That did surprise me.  There are older things in my closet.  She described him as shy and reserved and somewhat inexperienced with women.  At first she joked about his body in comparison to Pete’s and how she saw it as her responsibility to teach him about sex and what she called “the ways of manhood”.  She said that they’d had sex in her car, against a tree in Bailey Woods, done things in the back of a taxi and in a wardrobe with her hanging from the clothes rail. 

 

She then spoke more seriously about how special and attractive he made her feel, the softness and firmness of his skin, his indifference to her stretch marks, his gentle exploration of her body and then, importantly, how free she felt when they lay and held each other post-coitus.  She told me that “When we lie there.....sometimes talking....sometimes not.....sometimes getting ready to go at it again there is a quiet, a slowing of the clocks, a timelessness.  It seems that since I was seventeen I’ve been rushing from one thing to another, constantly with a million things going on in my head.  And none of them have really been invited. Not by me.  I don’t really want to be worrying about what to cook for tea, making different meals for fussy kids, getting the clutch on the car looked at, getting texts from Pete saying he told his sister she could borrow the hedge trimmer and that I’d drop it off or any of that stuff.  I didn’t realise this until the first time Alex and I had sex and collapsed onto each other and I felt that all of those stolen bits of my brain had been returned to me.  You and Richard always seem so settled and connected to each other you won’t understand but this is more like having an affair with the real me than with a man who isn’t my husband”.  There appeared to be no end to the ways in which she could describe this new lease of life. 

 

I didn’t say much in response to Kathy and her clear love for Alex and a version of herself she’d rediscovered.  She wanted to tell me something not get advice or an opinion.  I did ask if she was happy.  She answered “No. Happiness always seems to be something brief and elusive.  This feels like home.  I’m, I’m....................content”.                      

 

Later, that day I’d thought of the peace Kathy described as I peeled vegetables and watched Rob and Simon kicking a ball around the garden and the girls playing with their dolls on the patio.  Richard was complaining about having to discipline a new teacher in his department who’d made an unfortunate attempt at humour about the surname of a girl called Lucy Swallow.  The girl’s father had claimed she was traumatised and that the teacher should be on the Sex Offender Register.  Richard was very pleased with his retelling of this story.  I knew very well he’d develop it and shoehorn it into every dinner party conversation for years to come.  I thought of Kathy’s head resting on Alex’s chest and the sense of silence and stillness and contentment.    

 

It was Kathy who gave me the idea but I’m not like her.  Richard is pompous and rigid and increasingly indifferent to me but I chose him then and would still make that decision now.  The children fill the house with love and laughter and chaos and they are all that I could wish for them to be but....what Kathy described I recognised.  Or rather I recognised a need to find parts of myself that don’t seem to be required by anyone in my life other than me.  I didn’t take a lover though. I’ve no idea where I’d find one and I’m not sure that sex against a tree would be good for my back or the fabric of any of my clothes and I don’t think I’d be able to keep a straight face if I was being penetrated whilst hanging between some combat trousers and a hoody.  At my age I’d just look like a garment in need of ironing.  Instead I’m having an affair with myself, with silence, solitude and I’m experimenting with contentment.  Twice a week for the past two months when Richard thinks I’m volunteering at a local care home I’m actually not.  I’m actually in one of the study rooms at the town library.  They have big comfy chairs and acres and acres of silence.  At first I didn’t know what to do with myself and I left soon after arriving.  Then I took a book but couldn’t switch off the noise in my head.  I took some knitting but felt guilty that Richard would be ruining fish fingers at home and the children might have lost something only I could locate but with time and practice I’ve come to enjoy the silence.  I embrace it now.  It was Kathy who gave me the idea but I really think I’ve improved on it.




Patrick