Angela Arnold Poetry

Glimpse

Old man naked, unaware

of the door cracked open, the window

still as bare as himself and

star gazing neighbour left in shock – touched

by something unexpected. Seeing

only a self revealed that's now quite

inexplicably other.

One who visits only in the company

of weirdness, stress, surprise, at thoroughly

wrong-footed times.

A bear self perhaps, unpredictable. Or a slinking fox

sticking to the hidden gullies and hollows

of experience, the better to gorge.

She stares, this something different scenting animal,

gobbling a feast of embarrassment and slyness

and transgression magnified

by the length and depth

of the stare, the spread

of the blush, in the pitch dark.

The unshared appropriated with such relish.

Promising her twin proper self that this may be

a necessary anthropology of sorts, this examining of a soul

laid bare in its forgetting.

from In|Between (2023)

She Has to Do Things Brightly

With every inch of her heart. Let her be.

To dance down the street with red-twinkling feet

and a cloak to match that will never just

button, that would be merely literal –

hers is a much sharper living

out of the rich well of her.

Other to the power of banged trumpets,

with drum rolls that wash ashore, wash ashore, with

something sublimely missing:

this plain lovable bluntness totally takes

the edge off you and me. Let her be.

Her flighty voice carries

everything that ought to be afoot

in a proper world.

Her gestures expand all the world's volumes

spoken, by a factor of x.

Her giggles say brakes are for those of us

who don't know how to die.

She is all of us, burning.

from In|Between (2023)

To the Core

On the concourse I stand holding a core

distantly aware

of others similarly encumbered.

I see them now: munching done

(the lip movements perfect, words

chewed over, answers twice swallowed)

and pain regurgitated

all by stealth, visible only

to each other. The Cores. I see you.

Having drilled down, having

abstracted all the fine flesh, laid bare, extracted –

like you there, yes, in the wild-flame coat:

standing half gripped by your very own

inner thing, left to it. Look a bit helpless now.

Trainered, slick-haired or shorn, metal-bedangled

or paisley-accessoried, maybe still

with bag-drag in your eyes

while you scan the place for a better receptacle

for your soul: all of you. And the usual

conversation starts, under the radar.

Neon Baseball Cap has a don't-care suggestion (did you

hear?) and now Ms Telling You snides her own fruity

objection, just there, plain enough to see. Still their

unblemished cores hang like

evidence from fingertips, vividly ignored.

Movement ceases

as the inaudible argument rages. You can/can't let

the awkward things go; truly, there is no bin shaped enough.

I know: all this will be lost soon; normal life

resumes; the long wait an addled spook after all. –

But I still see you. Mirroring my indecision

whether to drop, to wipe, to pretend.

first published in Cerasus, issue 5

Clothing the Soul

An open wardrobe – an hour – a question

avoided, always.

Mother, wondering, huffing, the stripey thing, she suggests,

but then she has aspirations, notions

of normal.

Only refrain father can offer is like something

dragged in, but that's regardless, no pleasing him.

Pleasing in blue, red, green, in tight-lipped, in baggy and

leggy and flouncy flaunting, showing them

precisely nothing

of self. –

Wear it, tear it off again; paint yourself, slap it on, floor to

ceiling, for others to live in. Question still not

approached, not found its words yet, inside,

in head's own wardrobe.

Don't even say 'binary'.

How difficult can it be? Cloth. Mask. Act. Please.

No doors or windows needed. Live, just

like every other captive.

from In|Between (2023)

The Knowledge of Silver

It's not dirt, you babble, emphatic,

hastily swipe something aside

with a gesture: not dirt.

I know.

The wintry coat the kettle grows and

regrows, flakes as you tip; rimes and prime

stain grabbers – tea a speciality, and

spoons that will sport half trans-ethnic moons

all round the rim, whitely silver still

inside. I know what it takes: a sharp

fingernail to groove away,

stubbornly, scourers

only leaving that unspoon smell

of pungent newness –

inappropriate.

But you, you don't scrape, scrape,

scrape; you're content

that all is as should be,

intact, underneath and really,

I would think, maybe

as a husband might

still walk heavy footed,

most midnights,

to the perfect drum of your pulse.

from In|Between (2023)

Song of the Purse

First sun in what seems like weeks, just enough to wring

a smile from maybe-Mark on his daily slice

of reserved pavement, with his thin dull dun dog

and a frankly lame cap – but sun-reached, now,

the change in there sparkles like his gift to me, inviting

examination.

And purse flies for once, yaps its clamped mouth open

with ease: there, didn't hurt? Didn't.

Not when the day now touches apparently not just

a him but a them, sundry...

crackbothering prisoners and all sorts, all

sorts burst in on the mind

as if quite sure of a welcome there

(since the rain has stopped). Buzz-buzz

of a mobility scooter stops too: Better day, she says,

with a lightness, and more coins drop, flow. Seems that

everything flows now, funnels right down

into the large heart of it.

Even the nuisance bikers on the bypass are helping

life's thin song in all its bittyness to gell,

thicken, till you can just about stand a spoon in it.

All the lacks, all the absences,

will not be missed broad-daylightly today, lit

to this full measure.

first published in Obsessed With Pipework, issue91

Something to Give

'Lend me your gentler heart', I said

and you laughed, said 'Grow your own' as if

one could womb one up

from the depths, out of the left-over beginnings.

'It's fundamentally unfair', I said, thinking of all the

loveable ones, the unshunned of the world:

our swiftly forgiving heroines – who give

screaming abuse a miss, gifted as they are.

Bred like that. Radiating the willingness to cook and

iron time away with no complaint

and take armfuls of concern to their neighbours, clearly

made like that from the off. The effortlessly

faithful husbands with a smile that is both nine

and ninety rolled into one indisputable

loveableness. – All those.

The unfairness of it, to us: who else

will set light to yesterday's applecarts, get out

the pneumatic drill mid-speech, tip the balance

between bath water and surplus baby.

The smiles we raise may be belated. Give us time.

from In|Between (2023)

Spine Chillers

Quick brown rat across willing feet (you phone; I run up the lane)

and flash of gone goes one rogue runaway train, outlaw

among hiders even in his own country.

Stick purely prop, unbrandished: wellies the thing.

My gaze scoots after, on a sliver of a wake, scuttles right

out of that door of opportunity: nothing

to see, first stars still barely on speaking terms.

Just a couple of the brassier planets applaud my effort

in the long cold of a no-moon. –

Such a shamefaced, incomplete, no help at all moon that'll

lurk, rattish, behind the house till the exact chill of four.

Then throw a thin carpet of light ahead of itself,

chew miserly into the dark. Too late then.

Right now, there might be a hundred more – your call

had that pitch – under cover of a black wait (how many

stalled breaths?) and I promised. Promised.

No matter you ignored me the full shadow length of my time

spent, now spent, inside. Visits being hazard, stress,

question mark, yes. – Just let me fathom

this bad sky thing first: life in its simpler darkness.

from In|Between (2023)

Angela Arnold Poetry

People, situations, society: little moments observed,

tender exchanges, violent conflagrations averted, the hilarity of our bodies,

the minefield of our minds, the part-remembered and the wholly imagined,

me, us, them - as we are, as we might be,

snippets that say much more...