HavishamBeloved sweetheart bastard. Not a day since thenI Haven’t wished him dead. Prayed for itso hard I’ve dark green pebbles for eyes, ropes on the back of my hand I could strangle with.

Spinster. I stink and remember. Whole daysin bed cawing Nooooo at the wall; the dressyellowing; trembling if I open the wardrobe;the slewed mirror, full length, her, myself, who did this

to me? Puce curses that are sounds not words.Some nights better, the lost body over me, my fluent tongue in its mouth in it earthen down till I suddenly bite awake. Love’s

hate behind a white veil; a red balloon burstingin my face. Bang. I stabbed at the wedding cake.Give me a male corpse for a long slow honeymoon.Don’t think it’s only the heart that b-b-bbreaks.

Anne Hathaway‘Item I gyve unto my wife my second best bed …’(from Shakespeare’s will)

The bed we loved in was a spinning worldof forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seaswhere he would dive for pearls. My lover’s wordswere shooting stars which fell to earth as kisseson these lips; my body now a softer to his, now echo, assonance,; his toucha verb dancing in the centre of a noun.Some nights, I dreamed he’d written me, the beda page beneath his writer’s hands. Romancea drama played by touch, by scent, by taste.In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on, dribbling their prose. My living laughing love – I hold him in the casket of my widow’s headas he held mr upon that next bed.

The poem is language-rich. For example, the first three lines:

The bed we loved in was a spinning worldof forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seaswhere he would dive for pearls.

Before You Were MineI’m ten years away from the corner you laugh onwith your pals, Maggie McGeeney and Jean Duff.The three of you bend from the waist, holdingeach other, or your knees, and shriek at the pavement.Your polka-dot dress blows round your legs. Marilyn

I’m not here yet. The thought of me does not occurin the ballroom with the thousand eyes, the fizzy, movie tomorrowsthe right walk home could bring. I knew you would dance like that. Before you were mine, your Ma stands at the closewith a hiding for the late one. You reckon it’s worth it.

The decade ahead of my loud, possessive yell was the best one, eh?I remember my hands in those high-heeled red shoes, relicsand now your ghost clatters toward me over George Squaretill I see you, clear as scent, under the tree, with its lights, and whose small bites on your neck sweetheart?

Cha cha cha! You’d teach me the steps on the way home from Mass, stamping stars from the wrong pavement. Even thenI wanted the bold girl winking in Portobello, somewherein Scotland, before I was born. The glamorous love lastswhere you sparkle and waltz and laugh before you were mine.

Education For Leisure Today I am going to kill something. Anything.I have had enough of being ignored and todayI am going to play God. It is an ordinary day, a sort of grey with boredom stirring in the streets.

I squash a fly against a window with my thumb.We did that at school. Shakespeare. It was inanother language and now the fly is in another language.I breath out talent on the glass and write my name.

I am a genius. I could be anything at all, with halfthe chance. But today I am going to change the world.Something’s world. The cat avoids me. The catknows I am a genius, and has hidden itself.

I pour the goldfish down the bog. I pull the chain.I see that it is good. The budgie is panicking. Once a fortnight, I walk two miles into townfor signing on. They don’t appreciate my autograph.

There is nothing left to kill. I dial the radioand tell the man he is talking to a superstar.He cuts me off. I get our bread-knife and go out.The pavements glitter and suddenly. I touch your arm.

“Education for Leisure” – what does it mean?