No Room to Care
The mother-in-law was coming to stay, which meant there’d be a hole in time.
It meant there’d be no room to paint water-colour eyelids or write the plumes of Pompeii dust clouds. There’d be no room to climb stratospheres or wonder at the oscillations between adolescence and manhood. It meant punctuating her monologue with sighs, trying to slip into anecdotes of the odysseys of Icarus and Ithaca. It meant that the city’s vagabonds, with eyes like blown-out-fuses, had only themselves to blame. My patience will dwindle, eeking out from eyes in long drawn out pauses. I am a sort of spraining, grinding noise. A roll of the tongue. A dulled pulse. A spin on a heel. A sour cake offered on a plate with vine leaves, made by the woman who made my love with a womb infused with milk and honey. A venom and the hole in time made of droll speech and silence.
Dorothy Fryd is a writer and performance poet, whose poetry and fiction has been published by BRAND Literary Magazine, Forward Press, Momaya Press, Leaf Books and Awen Poetry. She was awarded the title of Canterbury Poet of the Year in October 2009 and is judging this year’s Canterbury Poet of the Year competition. She has performed her work at various venues in the UK, including the Barbican, the Roundhouse, RADA, the Poetry Café, Brixtongue Art Gallery and Canterbury Art Festival. Dorothy teaches poetry and creative writing workshops in primary/secondary schools and has recently worked on the 2009 Lynk Reach London Teenage Poetry SLAM and 2009 Camden Youth SLAM. and the Barbican Young Poets Project, which is a creative project designed to help emerging poets develop their writing and performance skills.
