Pam Thompson
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Poems by Pam
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The Magdalen with the Smoking Flame
1.
She sits, chin in hand;
how light caresses her:
blooms on her cheek;
silks her shoulders and arms.
That guttering flame trails
smoke in the air.
2.
After you'd done photographing light
falling through trees in diagonal shafts,
then the moon, in all its phases,
you moved in on people in the city.
Market-traders gave you the hard eye.
You never bought a Big Issue from the guy
outside Boots, just tried to snap his soul.
On Saturday night in Time bar, though,
you got the whole damn package:
A bar-man doing the cocktail thing;
along the ceiling, smoked green globes;
each alcove table was drowned in gold
and I wondered if you noticed how the woman
at our side was slowly turning into a woman
in a painting by Georges de la Tour.
And so was I.
When it comes
It will not be seismic, but subtle like scent;
windows won’t break, the earth won’t shift.
As unobtrusive as a leaf in March
it will barely flicker, a tense green tongue.
When it comes you may hear irregular beats,
like a faulty pentameter, a leaky heart.
One of seven plots, you will act in it, I will act.
We will catch our breaths. Lean forwards
in a theatre from the gods with no optical device,
no extra device, to view it. You may not
even hear it as it won’t be seismic but subtle.
Like scent. Like a leaf. Near your lips as you move to kiss it.
(first published in Show Date and Time, 2006, Smith-Doorstep)
The stories we tell
Remember the one about growing up?
It happened in the middle of the night.
You were in a hot place, lost,
then swans appeared as if from nowhere
and landed on the roof of a small white house.
You thought how strange this was
and also noticed the stars which were
unusually deep and sharp focused.
At the side of the house there were stairs
which you climbed only to find the swans,
ultra violet against black stone, grooming
themselves before they went to sleep.
And you were still lost, and for that reason,
glad of the swans and stretched out a hand in greeting.
But these swans were not the patient dumb
birds of poetry. Like you, they had come
a long way; were thirsty, hadn’t eaten since
the day before; wondered where they were too.
So they bucked, hissed – one lashed you
with its wing – sprang from this scuffle,
became a quilt of light flung recklessly high.
You felt, what? Abandoned? Even more
Lost than before? They’re only birds, you told
yourself but there was worse to come.
The people in the house were awake.
(first published in The Rialto)
Resurrection
After he’d gone she thought she’d bring him back
so she scoured the house for traces of his hair,
semen, blood and skin: epithelia scraped from a comb;
from her sheets after the last rite, from underneath her nails.
She ransacked sweat from a shirt he’d left.
Swabbed piss and shit from the toilet rim.
And conjured him on a night when a gibbous moon
stormed in and out of the clouds like a temper:
a man as large as bedlam, like The Angel Of The North,
dumb, blank-faced, but without wings.
Flight was never in her plan. She watched him through all weathers
and parked her car a little closer when it rained
to get a better view. She watched time turn its tricks,
how his skin sagged, fell away from bones. And how rooks,
nesting in the cavity where his heart once lay, pecked
at shreds remaining, and, she swears, spat them out.
(won first prize in the Nottingham International Poetry Competition, 2006-
published in Poetry Nottingham)
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