jacqueline martin
POETRY
Goldilocks
That was all years ago.
I know the family branded me a thief
but then the story never got beyond my guilt.
Mother had drilled me:
girls with gorgeous hair
need never pick the tab up for a meal.
Father said that sleeping in a stranger’s bed
was what the world expected
from a blonde.
So when that baby bruin wept
into his paws I was surprised as anyone,
no longer cutest in the room.
After I’d left the woods for city life
I saw how cliché had made victims of us all:
Snow White had been as bad as me
but was forgiven by the little guys,
who wanted someone pretty
round the house.
Published in Prole magazine issue 24
Miss Hoity-Toity
The houses ran out. Her march
echoed underneath the railway arch,
road lapsing into lane and fields
tied round in thorn and barley dart,
dark berry bushes drilled by lary wasps.
Sting me she dared, tumid with anger.
Ugly shoes looked up, still brown,
still clobbering the ground instead of clacketing,
indifferent to the argument they’d caused.
A man surprised her in the lane,
penis uncrouching. You’ll get stung
she laughed, and skipped away.
Published in The Moth magazine issue 32
Sundays
We wipe our shoes and lay our coats on Nanna’s bed Get off that bed
the tang of alcohol, some ham and bread buttered on Secret Shelf that folds down and folds up and down again and up Leave that alone the cat with golden claws Don’t touch the ornaments the dog with silky hair You know he doesn’t concrete yard with musty apple trees, a shed of comics (in American), some rough-skinned fruit Don’t eat those What’s a Tootsie Roll? Just wash your hands stretch fingers round the brick of soap, quickly, before kidnappers can reach the outside toilet Save them sweets for later and I will so I cannot be told to share.
Published in The Cannon's Mouth magazine issue 69
Screen Envy
He looks away from the clamour.
You have my complete inattention
says that look.
And I’m retelling what was told to me
about somebody’s desperate situation,
or about some baby seagulls
facing up to pigeons on the beach,
and there is only string and cardboard
in my mouth,
no moving pictures,
though I do the bird calls very well.
Published in The Cannon's Mouth magazine issue 69
My Dog Pieshop
My dog Pieshop will eat just anything -
paper, poo and tarmac, plastic shopping bags and string,
pebbles from the garden, crispy crisp bags from the park,
chunks of polystyrene, thorny flowers, leaves and bark.
One time, when these finds were being fished out by the vet,
a dapper little man fell out, his suit all wringing wet.
My name is Bond, James Bond he said, Your dog has saved the day,
then Pieshop coughed a diamond up and James Bond squelched away.
Published in The Caterpillar children's poetry magazine issue 27
The Crocus
thrusts through the blackened soil at dawn,
eager to know the early light that warms the slenderer
to bud, to swell, becoming blousy, opening that tender
throat to passing feet and claws, in trust, in triumph,
such an easy bloom, bright satin trashed within a month
and left to blanch, unpurpling on the lawn.
Published in The Dawntreader magazine issue 46
The Woman With The Giant Hands
I first saw her on a train, gazing at winter dusk
while everyone around just looked at
her or peered into the windows where reflections
told the same, extraordinary truth. If there had
been a child we might have grimaced as it
sorted through its reference points and finding
none that matched, began to form a question.
If there’d been a dog, it might have settled by
her side to beg a blanketing of warm dry flesh
but there was not, and we were all for throwing
her right off the speeding train despite not having
spoken to each other, as we watched the gentleness
with which she placed her fingers in a steeple,
frowning as the light outside grew dimmer than within.
Published in Magma magazine issue 68
Love Is
Love is a squirrel
burying some crap or other
in a place it will forget.
Stuff grows there anyway,
sprouting and fruiting
while Love digs again,
finds other hoards
of other Loves
and tucks them in its cheek.
This Script Contains Violence, Sex & Strong Language
The writer slit the throat of every sentence,
bled its spurting prattle until only dialogue remained.
He scrapped the dawdling and string (not luscious
like the kisses cut from Paradiso reels, nor graphic
as the grawlix in a cartoon cuss), and boiled speech
down to bitter, sour, sweet, frequently salty. In the dark,
the audiences ran their tongues across it.
Pond Tale
Four green goslings
scatter on the pond
for a fist of frogs, no
not frogs, feast,
for a fist of feast
or crumbs at least.
Gull scuds in
wet wing, feet first,
gabbles Little Goose
that he cunningly
rehearsed:
Grass tree, feed me,
sunny or a salty,
muddening the pie
in a cool flat sky
but the goslings eat
and look him in the eye.
Cloud song breaks
on the water’s face,
and the damselflies
flash by.
Published in The Cannon's Mouth magazine issue 69
Margate Sands
The sea says Schhhh
and the gulls say Awkhhh
but the seaweed sulks and stinks.
I cannot see the sea that the seagulls see
when their dinner is a real live fish.
The sea I see is the one they see
when the scraps from someone’s chip shop tea
are pulled from a bin and scattered on the quay
where big birds vie
for the fried fish bits and the half-drunk drinks
and a splodged-up pie.
The sea says Schhhh
and the gulls say Awkhhh
but the seaweed sulks and stinks.
I cannot see the wind that the seagulls ride
when they hang with a wing-wide hunch.
The wind I see is chewed by waves
and is runaway from by the sand in the bay
and the paper serviettes that were left from lunch
to flock along the beach
and the sea-splashed pier where the people shout
More fish! More beer!
The sea says Schhhh
and the gulls say Awkhhh
but the seaweed sulks and stinks.
Published in The Caterpillar children's poetry magazine issue 20
Care Home
We serve modern food.
The step-a-slope will turn into a slope but we don’t have the time for that right now.
You are welcome to bring in a very very small beloved piece of furniture.
A call button in every room (except the toilet in the hall, the laundry cupboard
and of course, the garden shed) means care is right at hand.
No pets and no dementia. No toenails can be cut by staff.
The downstairs lounge is where we have our fun activities.
Sadly, we do not take residents who cannot make it from their own room
to the downstairs lounge.
No towels or sheets are issued but most people have a relative to bring some in.
Let us know about a stiff tap. Or a light bulb should it die at night.
Hairdressing is twice a week! This is extra and there is a waiting list.
Published in The Moth magazine issue 37
Exemplar
The word, the one that reached me
through the mumbling was
Magnificat,
a Song of Mary:
first said by the girl from Nazareth
on finding she’d been done unto by God.
Attentive in the children’s pew,
I sold myself
to prudence,
hoping I’d be graced
a bellyful of Ghost
to keep my promises intact
and even in my wilder days I only let
conception glint,
never flare.
Now, too late for luck,
too late for science
scaled up to the knack of angels,
I might wish the girl from Magdala
had been the paragon,
magnificent
in red,
a line of virtue
drawn around her sensuality.