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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781906188252 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Carcanet Press, Limited |
| Publication date: | 11/01/2014 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 88 |
| File size: | 246 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
An Aviary of Small Birds
By Karen McCarthy Woolf
Carcanet Press Ltd
Copyright © 2014 Karen McCarthy WoolfAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-906188-27-6
CHAPTER 1
The Undertaker
wears white gloves
and his left hand waves
on the crowd, moves
slowly as if under
the surface where water
swims sinuous as an elver
that darts between clouds
of ink in violet reeds
weightless as birds.
Wing
We find you, dear Wing,
in the half-dark
on the way back from the piglets,
your knuckle of raw bone
and streak of claw-white quills
torn from the socket.
A grey goose soars
up high where hot-air balloons drift
and the wind is a shape
to wrap yourself around
solid but unseen, a somersault
inside the womb;
here, folded to a cup of hands,
plump as a wood pigeon
in the long, flat January grass
you are singular and intense
like a girl breathing quietly by a window,
her just-cut hair pressed against the glass.
My Limbs Beat Against the Glass
I am trapped in a room where my baby dies
and when I try to fight my way out
a Victorian lepidopterist with walrus whiskers
skewers my solar plexus
and pins me to a felt-backed board,
so my limbs beat against the glass
like a moth battering a paper lantern,
as he tightens the frame to a vacuum.
Morbleu
— rushes and there's no more
a whirl of empty dresses —
in this mudcracked room
palm frond feathers
helicopter
downwards
shallow roots torn
a broken bird
song explodes
on a frequency of earth and lime
too high to hear
— we haven't got —
a heart beat
— haven't got five minutes
a groan of sea
shushes up on shore
— rushes and there's no —
no ha ha ha of music
and radio
the thud of workmen
clatter of hollow poles — scaffolding
a truck in first gear
footsteps
school
an O of bells clangclangs
across the river
and then the hush
of marble
eyes unseen eyes unopened
endlessly eyes
Mort-Dieu
Our son
dear God
is dead
and gone.
His tomb
Our son
dear God
is dead
and gone.
His tomb
was red
with blood
and warm
as tears.
He was
born still.
Was this
dear God
your will?
White Butterflies
Three white butterflies
flutter then land
on the artichoke spikes
in the walled garden.
White sky against the ash.
The wind in the leaves
a rush of sighs.
White lavender
at the edge of the pool.
White hydrangeas
wilted in the bouquet.
White lilies sticky with scent.
White tissues in the box.
White linen on the bed.
White curtains shrunk in the wash.
White muslin squares.
Your tiny white vests, unworn.
Yellow Logic
Was it because I should have
bought those handmade, pony-hair boots
that swung round my ankles like a mane?
I can't forget Spaghetti Beach
and the gypsy girl with a nose ring
who sold me a rotting shoulder bag
then cursed me.
Perhaps, my darling boy, we'll meet
at the piscina municipal in Guadalest,
the one cut into the cliff,
surrounded by thick-bladed grass
green as Astroturf. I'll be lithe and sleek
as I back-flip into the water and pretend
I'm not afraid you'll disappear
like the sun on a so-so afternoon.
Missing
Every day I wake up and remember
your future is missing
and even though it never belonged to me
I take to the tow-paths of Amsterdam:
Herengracht, Singel ... pin A5 posters
to vitiligoed tree trunks.
In the photo your eyes are closed
and you don't look like anything any more
but you never know.
So I scour the alleys, pause outside a school.
Is that you strapped to a stranger's chest,
the one in the blue-for-boy sling?
The Paperwork
I sit up in bed, try to make up my mind.
Will it change anything if I decide
your heart, liver, lungs, kidneys
are returned to the abdominal cavity?
My forefinger traces a path through
Option 5c: I understand these parts
will not be returned to their original position.
Your navel has not yet shrivelled,
each toenail is sacred.
Under Other requests or concerns:
hands, feet, face, hair — all must be left intact.
Brain to be restored to head, skin
stitched neatly and correctly.
I peer at the page on the doctor's lap.
Yes, they may saw through your breastbone,
but they'll sew your little tummy up
as if you were a rare mediaeval tapestry.
I'll make sure of that. Eyes not to be touched.
The doctor bites her lip, writes it in the box.
The Museum of Best Laid Plans
(fragment)
Exhibit 17c (ii). Early 21st-century commonly adapted
bedside cabinet — IKEA, Billy shelving in beech veneer
containing a collection of miscellaneous domestic trinkets
and various homeopathic medicines (possibly placebos).
From bottom up: one transparent plastic watch (stopped);
Dr Bach Rescue Remedy (30 ml dropper); calendula
thiossinaminum (6º), arnica, aconite; several paperback
books including a number of Pago-Christian materia medica
including Sister Karol's Book of Spells and Blessings;
Back to Eden; African Holistic Health; The Fastest
Way to Get Pregnant Naturally; and Sonata Mulattica
(poems). Shelves IV & V: containing 13 pairs of sunglasses
(designer and high-street) ranging from imitation
tortoiseshell
(origin Lagos, Nigeria: c.1974) to 1950s bubblegum
pink rhinestone-studded (cf. early celebrity cultures partic.
An Audience with Dame Edna, 1986). Two boxes: above —
ProJuven (1.5 & 3%) (empty) with folded instructions
Applicare 1–2 misure di crema ogni giorno sulla zona
interna della braccia ... below — A4 stationery (Conqueror)
W Uden & Sons Ltd, Funeral Directors, labelled Infant:
Locks of Hair.
The Registrar's Office
isn't really an office it's a cupboard with
no source of natural light, and I don't
realise it but I'm loved up like the other
mothers gazing at meconium as if it's fresh tar
on a road not an odourless, black shit
that's been on the boil for nine months and
Lydia, that's the registrar's name, she
gives me a paper cone of iced water from
the dispenser to calm me down and it
does calm me, the water flows through
me and now we're holding each other while
Simon's down in the mortuary and I tell
her all about how he lost his mother from
a brain tumour when I was six months
gone, how her name was Lydia too, that
it was so quick and now this.
We're still holding on when he comes back
then joins us in a circle of three and even
another form to fill in can't sober me up
as the morphine unpeels another mezzanine
of hell in a shopping centre where women
with rigid quiffs and rouged cheeks glide
up and down glass escalators and
people believe in the faux marble fountains
although it's all really a shimmering
colon. Anyway, I'm determined, I say,
as I leave the room, when I get out of here, if
it's the last thing I do, I will get you
a window because that's not right, expecting
someone to live and work and sign
death certificates without a window, no-one
should have to put up with that, it's not
right, she's a good person with
a good heart, she should have a window.
Of August
Two agents, an editor and a couple of publishers come to
the
University for a panel discussion. Going home on the
train
afterwards, one of the students writes a synopsis of the novel
novel she
plans to pitch to them at a later date: the story of a
woman, The
Protagonist, who, after many years of trying to conceive,
is
finally pregnant. Her Best Friend is bipolar and has just
been
diagnosed with inoperable cancer, aged 36.
The pregnancy is going well but The Protagonist is
disconcerted
to learn that her friend has decided to refuse conventional
treatment in favour of acupuncture and classical Chinese
medicine. Although The Protagonist is not against natural
healthcare, equally she is unconvinced that acupuncture
is the
right choice: yes, The Best Friend has travelled widely in
China
and speaks and writes Mandarin, but she is not Chinese.
The baby is due that summer, in late July, or August —
when
both The Protagonist and The Best Friend share their
birthdays.
August is their favourite month and in late July, when the
contractions begin, there is a moment when both friends
worry
the baby might be born too soon.
Unfortunately, the birth does not go as expected and the
baby
dies during a long labour on the 7th of August, two days
after
The Best Friend's birthday. There is evidence to suggest
the
hospital is at fault, although the consultant who goes over
the
autopsy results with The Protagonist and her partner
advises
them to concentrate on rebuilding their lives. He also tells
them
about his 18-year-old daughter who was killed in a car
accident
two weeks before she was due to take up a place at
Oxford.
Time passes and The Best Friend decides to go scuba
diving in
Borneo. She is away for three months. When she returns
she has
lost a lot of weight and The Protagonist has a strong
feeling it is
too late. The Protagonist rings Another Friend and they
try to
devise a Strategy. But The Best Friend makes it very
clear she
does not want anyone in her life who does not support
her
treatment choice; right now she is focusing on feng shui
and
getting a new kitchen and bathroom fitted.
The Protagonist also has other things to focus on and the
relationship falters under the strain. The Best Friend
maintains
a constantly shifting hierarchy that elicits an undertow of
competition among all the female friends. This is
confirmed
when Another Another Friend rings and tells The
Protagonist
that The Best Friend has new test results that The
Protagonist
did not know about.
From this point on The Best Friend's medical situation
intensifies and now the priority is pain and symptom
management. The Best Friend would like to be more
sociable
but there is too much pain and her time is spent writhing
on the
sofa. Occasionally she is well enough to receive visitors
or drink
rosebud tea in the garden.
The kitchen and bathroom works continue, but The Best
Friend
is mugged on her way back from the building society with
£2000 cash to pay the builder. The Protagonist says this
is awful
at the best of times and that these are not the best of
times, but
the Best Friend does not like this and refuses to return
The
Protagonist's calls for nearly a month.
The Best Friend has long, lustrous red hair and The
Protagonist
thinks this may be one of the reasons why she is resisting
chemotherapy, but doesn't know how to broach this
subject
with The Best Friend.
Now it is summer again and The Best Friend is in and
out of
hospital. The last time The Protagonist sees The Best
Friend she
has to help her mother pin her to a bed with white metal
bars
that make it look like an oversized cot. The Best Friend is
in a
partial coma and cannot formulate words easily, but she
rattles
on the bars and asks The Protagonist to help her get out
of this
place, it's the hospital that's killing her.
Two days later The Best Friend dies in the hospital. It is
the
same hospital where The Protagonist's baby died, but in a
different ward, without a view of the river. The Best
Friend dies
on the 5th of August, on her 38th birthday. The
Protagonist is
proud that her friend has managed to die on this day,
because
she knows it will have meant a lot, because it is her
birthday,
and it is August, and these things were important to her.
Pinhole Camera
Light accumulates slowly
inside her and the dead say
keep your chin up, look to the sky,
we can help you then.
Gradually a landscape appears
on photographic paper:
a brown river through glass,
white tourist boats that toot as they pass
a Chesterfield sofa carved in sand
where two black dogs
snap at each other's tails. A long
exposure that drags on
for years: giraffe necks in the zoo
as seen from the cycle path,
that stiff fox outside the timber yard —
its brush fascinating and erect;
at every other bus stop a boy with curly hair
or an infant held close to the breast.
Portrait of a Small Bird on a Tree of 12 Metres
after Giuseppe Penone
I
Inside where it is dark, where branches
criss cross — a tree stripped
and whittled, where the wood is denser
and leaves flicker like bonfires
lit at the end of summer, here
in the heart of the wood you are the light
not the shadow, an unsolved equation
in a dog-eared exercise book.
II
Cross the red line and
the room changes size, dimension
— the ceiling reaches for a lightning spear,
wreaks havoc on a rectangle
of artificial daybreak while a rusted girder
snaps at a toddler on the bus —
everything I want is up there, just
out of reach, in the white emulsion.
Of Jealousy
I will not say much about the etymology but it is connected to zealous. There is a similar link between grammar and glamour. Thinking again of envy, the verb is envier in French whereas in Spanish enviar means to send. Perhaps this active element is why envy has Sin status while jealousy does not. I am envious of other people's ability to concentrate and the gulls I can see from the window.
I am reminded of the beach in Sitges, when a bird, possibly a small parakeet, was flying amongst the sunbathers. The bird kept launching itself at the waves and a man (middle-aged, fully clothed, quite fat) was trying to catch it. Although it looked like the bird might drown, the man's outstretched hands seemed sinister. The bird fluttered towards the sea, the man waded out another inch in rolled-up trousers. This continued for some time. Then I saw another man dragging a Persian cat down the boardwalk on a lead.
I Remember Your Mother Dying
after Craig Raine
I remember
We were driving, it was a weekday, we stopped at a motorway service station just outside Bristol, although of course it could have been in any of those deadening, uniform places which always make me think of how a tree has no choice as to where it grows, the seed falls as the wind takes it or saplings are planted in military rows. We were queuing for herbal tea: I was four months pregnant and watching what I ate.
I remember
Your father on the phone, with the news, you reaching for your wallet, the tea hot on my tongue as I sucked it through the little slit in the white plastic cup cover.
I remember
Your mother, how she always came to the yellow front door to greet us, often in an apron, as we drove up the track to the house, squashed into the front seat of your father's Land Rover. How she always smiled brightly and waved even though she never smiled for photos, barely even on her wedding day. How she baked bread and grew vegetables in the polytunnel and the walled kitchen garden: an espaliered peach, artichokes and figs. How you said your childhood was perfect.
I remember
The funeral. The eulogy I wrote. I watched your father as he vetted the text, how he paused when he reached the part where I said I knew her spirit would live on, exhaled when I qualified it with 'in the house and garden'. The only correction he required was for me to change glacé cherries to maraschino.
I remember
The service was in a modern crematorium with a large stained glass window that looked out onto a hillside. There was something about the aspect, the slope into the horizon. Two things happened and I can't remember the order in which they occurred. A car alarm kept on sounding while the Bach Choir was singing. This would have been intrusive at any service, but your mother hated loudness and despised cars. Eventually it abated then started again, before finally stopping. The second thing that happened was a hawk flew in an arc right across the diagonal of the window. Many people in the room noticed it and seemed pleased, relieved even, that something beautiful had taken place.
I remember
Your brother, a mathematician, how he sat with your mother and wrote a list of all the places she wanted to visit. How we went to the gardens at Antony that were full of rhododendrons and camellias. Your brother took a lot of photographs of your mother and then I took the camera and tried to capture the three of you on a stone bench near the river, but your mother hid her face under her pale blue hood. I remember how, when she walked, your mother thrust out her chin and hopped down unaided from a wall overhanging the path. That night, when we got home, she went to bed and didn't get up again.
I remember
The first inkling had been at Christmas when she burnt the roast potatoes.
I remember
Her sitting in bed with her long white hair plaited and patting my stomach, telling me to make sure I took care of the baby. Her asking what we wanted and I mentioned the tall- backed farmhouse chair, how her eyes half closed in assent.
I remember
Trying to squash all the pills into the dispenser we'd bought with the days of the week embossed on them, but there were too many pills and a simpler system with a notebook was adopted instead. The mattress your father dragged into the bedroom so he could sleep at the foot of her hospital bed. How your mother liked to watch the birds at the feeder he had erected outside her window.
I remember
Her trying to remember certain words, reaching for them as if they were apples on a high bough.
I remember
How in the beginning she'd tried to hold on, as you held on to the idea she might survive until the baby was born for as long as you could. How in the last few days she kept murmuring the word oblivion.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from An Aviary of Small Birds by Karen McCarthy Woolf. Copyright © 2014 Karen McCarthy Woolf. Excerpted by permission of Carcanet Press Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Dedication,
Acknowledgements,
The Undertaker,
Wing,
My Limbs Beat Against the Glass,
Morbleu,
Mort-Dieu,
White Butterflies,
Yellow Logic,
Missing,
The Paperwork,
The Museum of Best Laid Plans,
The Registrar's Office,
Of August,
Pinhole Camera,
Portrait of a Small Bird on a Tree of 12 Metres,
Of Jealousy,
I Remember Your Mother Dying,
Where Steel Clatters,
Starlight,
Fragments,
The Scales,
Moon in Her Many Guises,
The Puppies,
The Iris Field,
A Small Ball of Mercury,
Circle,
Emotions,
July,
Bamboo,
August,
Of Roadkill and Other Corpses,
Against the Clock,
Otto,
Reasons to Fear Butterflies,
The Calf,
The Sooty Shearwaters,
Hawk,
Letter to Miriam,
A Matter of Gravity,
The Last Sardine,
Swim Often,
After August,
The Weather in the Womb,
As an Axe Misses the Tree,
An Aviary of Small Birds,
Tasting Note for Grief #17,
The Wish,
About the Author,
Copyright,