Jayne Fenton Keane

litmus

Before I turned red

there was a moment of blue
before
I passively drained to white.

In China they had the same problem
when they tried to grow a blue rose

which petal by petal
lost its initiative
to be calm
and cultivated
without its hell-red thorns.

 

a father's re-write

This third birth is the hardest.

This cradle the most abandoned.
Tears are dried beans
rattling in my skull.
This baby me is not the one
they want to poke in the belly
or tickle the eye of.

This third age baby is the kind of baby
that they say there there to
or poor luv
or it could be worse
not
would you like an icecream
or a soft warm pet?

I am learning the identity
of the one who shouts in my muscles
and screams and screams and screams
along my neurones.

My mouth is stuffed with confessions
I dare not make.

 

shapeshifter

When my father disappeared at night

I used to wonder where he went.
One evening, when I crept out of my room,
I discovered the prints of a stallion
and horse shoes slipped under our doormat.

He was Pegasus
and I rode his shoulders
with nine-inch spurs.

I stopped buying him slippers
for Fathers Day that night.

It disturbs me now
to hear him talk
about cold bare feet
around the time of his birthday.