Taking Corners
(beginning with a line by Derek Mahon)
What middle-class cunts we are,
coming in our knickers over the action of the Dyson Baby,
which even swallows cat hair
and makes this house respectable, at last.
See how it snuffles out the very least
of the evidence, sticking its nose
(and how, against ourselves, we cannot help but love it)
into cavities and corners like a po-faced aunt.
How the heart outrides its certainties.
Buoyant as a fool on its sphere-based mechanism,
the body follows through,
ploughing a neat, clean furrow down the avenues of glass.
And are we loosening our snow shoes?
Teetering upon the brink of thirty, I lean from darkness
into the light; from mess to measure;
from (pull the curtains, love!) puzzle to clue.
‘Taking Corners’ from The Squirrels Are Dead © Miriam Gamble. Reprinted by kind permission of the author and Bloodaxe Books, 2010.
(beginning with a line by Derek Mahon)
What middle-class cunts we are,
coming in our knickers over the action of the Dyson Baby,
which even swallows cat hair
and makes this house respectable, at last.
See how it snuffles out the very least
of the evidence, sticking its nose
(and how, against ourselves, we cannot help but love it)
into cavities and corners like a po-faced aunt.
How the heart outrides its certainties.
Buoyant as a fool on its sphere-based mechanism,
the body follows through,
ploughing a neat, clean furrow down the avenues of glass.
And are we loosening our snow shoes?
Teetering upon the brink of thirty, I lean from darkness
into the light; from mess to measure;
from (pull the curtains, love!) puzzle to clue.
‘Taking Corners’ from The Squirrels Are Dead © Miriam Gamble. Reprinted by kind permission of the author and Bloodaxe Books, 2010.
Miriam Gamble talks to the Scottish Poetry Library podcast about her new collection Pirate Music. She reads a number of her poems and discusses her approach to writing.
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Watch Miriam Gamble perform her poetry.
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