Spinning Plates
My mother was mad as mercury,
mad as a silken Disraeli stovepipe hat
hiding a gypsum-white rabbit.
She once told me – the malt talking –
I wasn't her first born boy;
there had been seminal drafts.
She said being pregnant
was like spinning a bone-china plate
on the thinnest stick inside you –
breakages were bound to occur.
It was a question of which piece
could drop intact and roll around
on a hardwood floor, its rim ringing
with cries. My sister is a wild firing,
an artisan’s multi-coloured plate
still atwirl. I am a white canteen
saucer, ready to be tanned with tea-
slops. A cupped palm for spillage.
‘Spinning Plates’ from Spinning Plates © Richie McCaffery. Reprinted by kind permission of the author and HappenStance Press, 2012.
My mother was mad as mercury,
mad as a silken Disraeli stovepipe hat
hiding a gypsum-white rabbit.
She once told me – the malt talking –
I wasn't her first born boy;
there had been seminal drafts.
She said being pregnant
was like spinning a bone-china plate
on the thinnest stick inside you –
breakages were bound to occur.
It was a question of which piece
could drop intact and roll around
on a hardwood floor, its rim ringing
with cries. My sister is a wild firing,
an artisan’s multi-coloured plate
still atwirl. I am a white canteen
saucer, ready to be tanned with tea-
slops. A cupped palm for spillage.
‘Spinning Plates’ from Spinning Plates © Richie McCaffery. Reprinted by kind permission of the author and HappenStance Press, 2012.
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Listen to Richie McCaffery read and discuss his work on the Scottish Poetry Library podcast.
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Listen to Richie McCaffery read his poem 'Spinning Plates'.
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