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Real Estate Poetry |
Apparel
1. Day dress, Amherst
What gives it away as a replica
is the absence of wear
where you’d expect it - elbows, cuffs,
an ink stain here and there.
This is how the original looked
the day they brought it home,
before she slipped it on
and daylight began to take its toll.
2. Margaret Ryan’s petticoat
excerpt from the Poor Law Guardians’ Minute book
The charge being proven,
let the record show
the pauper Margaret Ryan,
wearing one petticoat
more than the regulation,
owned up and was given the road.
3. Marie Curie’s wedding dress
She wanted one she could wear
to the laboratory after the curé’s
“What God has bound together…”
a cross between a lab coat and a bridal dress,
sleeves to leave her hands free, a shade
dark enough to accommodate dust.
The Race Field
September 11th, 2008
*
A Transit towing a load of furlong markers
whose tracks, the farther it goes, grow fainter.
*
A tractor and a harrow preparing sand
to plant and harvest before the tide turns.
*
On the Race Field gate, that lovely extra s -
mulled over and gone with - in Horses Boxes.
*
Punters eyeing the horizon, like fishermen;
The fishermen, fishing offshore, study form.
*
Neck and neck on the straight for home,
our hands touch; They have lives of their own.
*
No wind; Or no wind worth mentioning;
And still the VIP marquee billowing.
*
He drives the final furlong and digs a hole
that the sea fills, for the final furlong pole.
Real Estate
1. Estate
Marble mantle clock (no pendulum), Sharp TV,
assorted china, spark guard, costume jewellery,
paperbacks, including Roger Casement’s 1916,
nest of tables, brass log box, Dresden figurine,
light fittings, bedside lamps, Deca exercise bike,
nine unfinished oils on board titled Lamb of Christ.
2. Fan
I would be lying if I said I knew,
(and it is academic at high tide),
among these three hundred and sixty-five,
which island whatever Beatle it was
shelled out for for his oriental bride.
Picture instead the intrepid auctioneer
come spirit merchant come undertaker
in mackintosh and fisherman’s waders
who wades out with SOLD sign and hammer
to drive the point home, like the man
who happens on strangers and has the wind
drained from his sails by fielding question
after question about where on earth
he might be going with a winnowing fan.
3. The Drop Cloth
Everything moved to the centre of the room
and draped is replaced, precisely from memory.
The fine white mist from his lamb’s wool roller
lifts from skirting and architrave with clear spirits;
By the time he leaves the only signs he’s been
will be a hint of paint, a sash window lifted
to admit fresh air. The bed sheet that doubles
as a drop cloth folds inwards on itself.
4. Union Cottage, 1898, Mulhussey
Whoever the tradesmen who built it were
this house stands to them. Push your
head through the glory hole and smell the air.
They say they measured slightly shy of square
when they set their guide lines to allow for
the guide line, so faces of stone they were
measuring for would meet the other
plain stone faces full on, plum. A steel square
laid to bevels, quoins and joists sits flush, or
a level set to its throated sills and chamfers,
pitch pine rafters and trusses, balusters,
shingles, casements, scantlings and hangers,
and the bubble settles at the dead centre.
The purlins are seasoned, dry as tinder.
