Telling Tales

by Patience Agbabi

  mine a fine line get

  through

  to

  you

  Your body spread out like the map

  of a falcon in full-feathered-flight

  wanting to be unicorn

  one breath on your rook and you bucked

  your tragus and you flew

  I rode you halfway round the globe till I was saddle-sore

  and never coming back

  You scratched an outline on my bare back

  your sword-pen-gun

  blacked ink in my skin deep as melanin

  you carved my back a gold frame

  ornate with leaves

  but left before you filled in the picture

  so my back became the mirror mirror

  on the shelf

  you looked into its glass and saw yourself

  in the future leaving

  now I’m sitting here rekindling your memory

  like an old flame

  You backstabbed

  but I healed scabbed

  like an oil painting

  now I’m reflecting

  on this old gold ring

  you left on my finger the day you left

  With this ring

  I opened your mind a book and read

  in fine gold letters

  Don’t touch my metal

  déjà vu but the urge was too strong

  I put my tongue to your lobe

  and you bolted

  leaving me singed the wild bird

  who

  flew

  too

  close to your fire and scorched her wings

  Betrothed to a future perfect you

  I read the minds of gold-studded unicorns

  with fake horns who

  see their fate framed in the fading blue-

  black of my back

  when I turn my back

  on them

  for not being you

  Makar

  Frankie Lynn

  If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

  – Henry David Thoreau

  To Denmark’s Freetown Christiania

  my mind transports me when it’s overcast,

  when there’s a thunderstorm or night draws near

  I close my eyes: the heady hit of grass

  from hash stalls; houses honed from wood and glass,

  one flaking door, its mirrored hall, the spiral

  staircase: on that battered sofa – Arild,

  his purple dreads engrossed in his own story,

  Arild, who flew too close to gold, dropped out

  and landed here, the tumble-down, three-storey

  Sesame House, home of the down, the out,

  who come to learn how to survive without:

  to make do, make things, make things up, to dare

  to fabricate a castle out of air

  under a master, aka The Artist,

  whose learned thoughts flow deeper than a fjord

  and made of Arild’s mind a palimpsest

  on which he wrote three notes that formed a chord

  till Arild knew the world within a word

  and one long night, through spelling out a spell,

  cobbled a cabin made of cockle shells

  with seven caves, each cave singing the sea

  and when the sun came up his cabin shone,

  everyone marvelled at his sorcery;

  but Freetown states you can’t create a home

  without consent: a clash, and Arild’s gone,

  squeezed out, forced out, pushed out down Pusher Street …

  now here we meet him, crossing Princes Street,

  Edinburgh: now an actor, single, shaved,

  who slept on someone’s floor two years ago

  till luck ran out; homeless: then one night caved

  a home inside the Mound, its walls aglow

  with books, books, books, except for one framed photo

  where you’d expect a mirror: Hogmanay,

  Deirdre and Angus on their wedding day,

  his dearest friends: Angus, bleached blond, well-built;

  Deirdre, brunette, petite; she made his outfit –

  bubblewrap jacket, seersucker kilt

  to match her jeans bejewelled with pomegranate

  seeds, her bubble shoes the perfect fit:

  made for each other – Deirdre wears the trousers,

  Angus, the kilt – they’re solid, safe as houses

  till late midsummer’s eve, Angus away

  in England for a month, everyone high

  on homebrew except Arild who today

  must spell it out, confess to Deirdre why

  it’s agony to look her in the eye

  for every time he looks at her, he’s cursed,

  must say those words a thousand times rehearsed:

  I must make love to you. Two years he’s made

  light of it, nothing of it, forged, invented

  a virtue of necessity, betrayed

  nothing, but love, drunk on itself, unwanted,

  made a pass, yet Deirdre’s strong, undaunted:

  I will, she laughs, if, for three weeks, my Danish

  bookworm, you can make the Castle vanish;

  not knowing at that instant Arild texts

  The Artist in his hammock out in Freetown

  who knows, this master artist-architect,

  both how to build things up and pull things down;

  how the right words, verb, adjective and noun,

  in the right order, uttered in the air

  can turn a sandstone castle to thin air

  for the small sum of a thousand euros

  which isn’t much when love feels more like death

  so Arild learns the craft and each day grows

  as well versed as the witches in Macbeth

  predicting destiny with sound and breath,

  till August brings the Festival: day one,

  Edinburgh wakes to find her Castle gone!

  Tourists, their eyes set on wide-angle lens:

  actors drop fliers, workers, shoppers dazed;

  Angus and Deirdre coming back from friends

  stare at the huge blank empty space, amazed

  that overnight, history’s been erased.

  Throwaway sentence uttered on the solstice,

  Deirdre chokes, remembering her promise.

  I gave my word to Arild, she tells Angus

  who pales and holds her hand to keep from shaking,

  The Royal Mile indifferent to their anguish.

  There’s no way out but take the road not taken –

  if Arild knows the art of dark unmaking

  what more can he unleash, unearth, undo:

  Make love to him, but let your heart be true.

  A stone’s throw from the Castle to the Mound,

  each painful step as heavy as a stone

  and each stone building weighted to the ground,

  each cobbled wynd is whispering Run home!

  A kiss, she takes the final steps alone,

  her mind reverting to their wedding day,

  that photograph. But now her lips are grey.

  Arild, who caved a home inside the Mound,

  is squatting deep inside its entrance, Arild,

  who sees in Deirdre’s bearing how profound

  true love can be; his monumental oral

  feat has spelled out love’s double-headed arrow:

  physical, headstrong, passionately selfish,

  psychical, heartfelt, passionately selfless.

  You’re both too good for me. Go back to him.

  Arild is spent and yet he owes The Artist,

  who, hearing of his pupil’s altruism,

  cancels the debt. Now Arild knows that art is

  the making of him: art is his catharsis,

  through words, words, words, he’ll purge the pain, the doubt.<
br />
  The cave erupts and pushes Arild out

  to reinvent himself again, a makar:

  to make a poem; hone it, room by room,

  stanza by stanza; form, on one blank acre

  from bricks and mortar, breath and metre, home;

  to mount the spiral staircase of his poem,

  take a battered volume off the shelf,

  open a random page, and read himself …

  STROOD

  Reconstruction

  Kiranjeet Singh

  The ‘honour killer’, Gino De Luca, has today been convicted of manslaughter of his teenage daughter. Photographer De Luca, 44, was suffering from severe depression at the time of the killing. He beheaded his daughter, Virginia, 14, then delivered her severed head to alleged blackmailer, Tony ‘The Ape’ Ferarro, 37. Ferraro faces allegations of child abuse. De Luca will serve his 8-year sentence at a secure psychiatric hospital.

  – The Echo, 20 June, 1984.

  Had her dad’s red hair but wild as I

  ragged it. snapped; she knew

  how broke his lens , gave what

  it wanted, game of he …

  But he became . My Gino did

  some shots for that , : had to.

  , The Ape, Warholed his flat with young

  redheads, call them his ‘girls’.

  Had her headshot; wanted to her. He

  in photos, lies, told Gino she had

  no De Luca blood, his Achilles that.

  My man lost Not his baby …

  Not the I married in this photo

  snapped on his way court, and

  the headline, the

  of it. My Gino only

  said one word, Sorry, was his way,

  to leave it He had to.

  I couldn’t face him, or the I save

  the papers I still see Virginia …

  They said each time Gino faced the mirror, was

  her pale face his eyes to …

  Profit

  Yves Depardon

  Radix malorum est Cupiditas. Ad Thimotheum, 6°.

  Ladies and Gents and Miscellaneous,

  is how I start my Feel-Good talks, Tonight

  my lecture is on Greed, yes, Avarice,

  the deadliest of sins. I stand before you,

  guru of Gordon Gekko, ‘Greed is Good’,

  a liar, forger, thief: thigh-deep in sin.

  Oh yes, I’ve had my innings and my outings –

  more than once, I’ve peaked, top of the hit list

  and lived. I’m vicious, too wicked to die.

  You want to know the consequence of sinning?

  Don’t ask a saint, O ladies, ask a sinner.

  And then I cast my eye upon the crowd,

  nodding my head as if remembering

  a heinous deed for which I paid twice over.

  And after this dramatic pause, my punchline:

  Radix malorum est Cupiditas.

  A pinch of Latin to add gravitas:

  Love of money is the root of evil.

  Already, some are squirming in their seats

  and one or two are weeping. I take pains

  to look the part, my greying hair dyed yellow,

  stringier than Stringfellow, greasy

  and shoulder length. I dress androgynous,

  a velvet robe, touch of the Vatican

  but don’t mention the G word or the J word.

  As for my voice, I camp it up an octave,

  to freak old ladies out, and thrill the queens,

  address my business partner as ‘my partner’

  and roll my eyes a lot. They love the act.

  You see this volume here? I hold it up,

  You Wouldn’t Want to Go There: A Confession,

  my life, my death in print. Read it to learn

  how NOT to go to Heaven. Me, in hardback.

  You won’t see me outside the pearly gates,

  I’m going somewhere hot by Business Class –

  Radix malorum est Cupiditas.

  It’s hot, hot-off-the-press, singed by the fires

  of Hell, self-help with bells on. See this water?

  Cloudy as a Welsh weekend, it’s blessed

  with healing properties, the minerals

  will cure all ills from asthma to depression.

  Who’d like a sip? Take care, it’s medicine,

  not Evian. You may be wondering

  why I wear a diamanté wristband?

  Crims Against Crime. Follow us on Facebook.

  For a small sum, you too could raise awareness …

  They lap it up: the dogdy rainwater

  in bottles, and the sparkly rubber bands,

  they’ve come to spend spend spend. When they’ve suspended

  all disbelief, I raise my crystal glass:

  Radix malorum est Cupiditas.

  And then I roll my eyes: ‘What shall it profit

  a man, if he shall gain the whole wide world, and

  lose his own soul?’ Mark 8, verse 36.

  Ladies and Gentlemen, I lost my soul!

  It’s then I pause to drink the glass of claret

  and eat some dry white bread. You want a story?

  This is the tale I tell them: I grew up

  somewhere not in London nor in Kent –

  believe you me, you wouldn’t want to go there.

  I formed a gang, we swore blood brotherhood,

  shared the same scar, called ourselves The Lifers.

  Just three of us, the twisted twins and me.

  Handbags at first but then we graduated

  to break-ins, made a thousand pounds a week,

  not to mention all the benefits

  under false identities. We spent it

  on wine, women, William, as in Hill.

  Oh, I could tell you, on St George’s Night

  how we paid homage to the red, the white!

  And how we swore allegiance, how we swore

  ‘Fuck this, screw you!’ until the air was blue

  with uniforms, the rest of it’s a blur,

  but time is cash … One night, the twins and I

  were in the local wine bar, when we heard

  that Baz, a virgin member we were grooming

  had been done over fatal by the rival

  gang, The Deathwish, led by Death. We were

  tooled up, our hand-cut suits lined thick with knives

  and bored as hell. I smashed our empty bottle

  of red against the bar, ‘Death, thou shalt die!’

  and off we sped. We found this ancient geezer,

  smelling of piss, face like a fist. I kicked him,

  felled him like a deck of cards. ‘Fuck you!

  Ain’t you lived long enough? Drop dead, you bastard!’

  He turned his head to face me, ‘Go on, kill me!

  I’m fucked, nothing but flesh and blood and skin.

  At Death’s door. Death, you wanker, let me in!’

  ‘Where’s Death?’ I kick again, ‘Death,’ croaked the tramp,

  ‘condemned block. Number 4.’ And there we found him,

  not Death, but something far more entertaining:

  the suitcase, crammed with filthy dirty lucre.

  Someone’s gold, someone who didn’t make it,

  so hot it hurt our eyes to look at it.

  ‘Brothers,’ I cried, ‘this calls for celebration.

  Champagne’s not good enough! Some Charlie Chaplin!’

  And off I sped to get some choice white powder

  from my associates, murderous arsenic.

  You think I’d share my profit with those arselicks?

  And back I sped to that dark place lit up

  with all that glisters. There, the twins embraced me,

  with grunts and grins and then the stranglehold

  from one, and from the other, seven stab wounds!

  They watched me bleed to death in that foul squat,

  forming the arsenic into two fat lines
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  and me, I watched them snort like no tomorrow

  and twist and writhe and die a young man’s death

  before I fell into a ten-year coma.

  The wages of sin are death. I flat-lined twice

  and twice they called the priest. When I woke up,

  the nurse looked shell-shocked, ancient, and addressed me

  as Sir. I stretched my arms to yawn and noticed

  my scar, raised, red. And then I spoke. My voice

  raised like a preacher’s, organ, bass and brass:

  Radix malorum est Cupiditas …

  If people want to read the uncut version,

  it’s in my book, You Wouldn’t Want to Go There.

  Sold out. I have a few deluxe editions

  at thirty pounds, each one signed by the master

  of motivation, M, who wrote the foreword,

  and me. I take all credit, debit cards.

  Of course you may be steeped in avarice,

  too miserly to part with such a sum?

  Perhaps a wristband, sir? You look like you’re

  in need of moral guidance. Go to hell?

  Already been there, thank you. Water, madam?

  You could drop dead tomorrow, there’s no future,

  only now. It’s your life, make your choice.

  Two for a fiver. Don’t all rush at once.

  ROCHESTER

  Things

  Klaudia Schippmann

  I don’t need love

  For what good will love do me?

  Diamonds never lie to me

  For when love’s gone

  They’ll lustre on

  – ‘Diamonds are Forever’, Don Black

  My wedding ring? I never take

  it off. I once made the mistake,

  and paid for it. The money stopped.

  I took the bus and window shopped,

  seeing in the window’s filth

  the dull reflection of myself

  till something caught my eye, a spark:

  I stared stock-still till it grew dark –

  a necklace with a ruby clasp,

  if I could plunge my hand through glass …

  Nothing else mattered. Hubby paid

  to keep my name from the front page …

  My wedding ring. Its antique gold

  understatement leaves me cold,

  its clean cut vowels that say, I’m rich.

  I much prefer the nouveau riche,

  stone-encrusted blatant bling

  that sparks from my engagement ring,

  such sparkling wit – such repartee,

  these diamonds winking back at me –

  this emerald-cut centre stone

  takes centre stage at each At Home.

  Let bling deliver blah de blah