So Much for Mañana - by
After twenty years in the mainland
/ Mother’s gone back to the Island
/ to let her skin
/ melt from her bones
/ under her native sun.
/ She…
the body
The Sari - by
Inside my mother
/ I peered through a glass porthole.
/ The world beyond was hot and brown.
/
/ They were all looking in on me…
Ripeness - by
It is three months since you taught me love can be fun
/ and one since you came to fruit,
/ breasts weighty and…
The Curator - by
Step this way, sir. Just here you may see
/ a child’s head so full of water
/ that the world’s alarms were quite…
Dissection of an Infant – Vascular Preparation - by
I would have loved you, wept
/ with your father and your mother
/ over these tiny perfect hands, perfect feet
/
/ preserved skin-free, en-pointe –
/ as…
My Mother’s Body Interrogated By Light - by
This is what happened
/ Someone lifted a grey translucency to the light
/ and held it there
/ seeing the knit fracture in the clavicle
/ the…
The Man With Three Legs - by
From the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery,
/ University of St Andrews
/ In the autumn of 1948 a message was received from a…
Voluntary Redundancy - by
‘There is at least a moderate risk that there is in your family
/ an alteration in a gene that can cause…
From the Hinterland - by
After a visit to the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh and especially for Kazimierz Kuczynski,
/ F.R.C.S. Edinburgh, and his…
The Heart of the House - by
Blackened
/ through lack of care
/ like an old grate
/ raked from the fire,
/ its two wings collar
/ the trapped air
/ and fuse at their lower tips
/ as…
Ned Black’s Dream - by
The Misses Nelly to the Burgess surgeon!
/ This very night, a performance
/ Of dissection – flexing leg, belly, supple loin and eye…
dàn - by
sgrìobh thu air m’ anam
/ do nàdur, a bhidse gun chridhe, is dhùin
/ thu an leabhar gu grad mus d’ ràinig
/ sinn deireadh…