The Ofi Press Magazine
International Poetry and Literature from Mexico City
Poems by Pippa Little (UK) Published in The Ofi Press issue 38.
Sister I stole skeins of your hair from our hairbrush just as I took stuff you left around that smelled of you, owned your mystery.
You were who I could never be. I was the one who cried in the only wordless hour we sat as a family before the doctor:
years you talked for me, coping, coping.
I’m sorry for all of it, the unmothering, unfathering, the hurt that felt like love and how I love you now
as we grow old in separation.
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| On Starbucks’ corner hunched against the cold I’ve been here since the moon was high; come morning, blow hard into the knot of my blue hands, I have no hope today will be more than the old shuttle between being sober and being blotto.
It’s a kind of leaving without going, blotto: an easy travelling farther away than cold, swift and sure as a loom shuttle I go clean and I go high, way past being lost or found – in hope only that one day I shall free this knot,
memory-knot, hunger knot, knot that’s the opposite of blotto - if you see me huddled at your feet I hope you’d throw me more than a blind cold stare from your important walking, high above me, on your commuter shuttle:
to and fro you go, slaves of that great shuttle faster and faster and for what? A slimy knot you can never shift from your gut. Only a high ending and a hurrah and I’ll soon be blotto, my fanfare in your face, my joke against life’s cold shoulder, in the sure and resounding hope
of what must come, hope in spite of hope. The north wind’s a blade-sharp shuttle I’m an impediment to its purpose, cold. All in the end I’ve got is this ordinary knot That’s me. Do you know blotto? Do you know high?
Out cold, high, face kicked to a knot, small hope of recovery. Found by the airport shuttle, blotto. |
Big-bellied, bosomy, you bare your rump
to North America: these Atlantic airs have buffed your
spectacular ugliness, bouffant mad mother -
too many husbands, or too few,
you are no white ship sailing away
but one bent anchor, unblinking witness:
moon-battered too long for any kindness
you rage on the cliffs in your workhouse shift
all grey lichen, yellowing bruises,
yours to command, this origin-song you teach me
over and over until I learn, though I never manage it:
how shame and pride have nothing to say to one another
but are as snail and shell, one strange flesh.
I still ache to bury my loneliness in you, the way an injured tern
might huddle into the rocks of Skellig Michael,
breaking her African journey long enough
to let that rough tongue work its mercy.
The Hag of Beara is a stone form looking out to sea from South West Cork.
About the Poet
Pippa Little was born in East Africa, raised in Scotland, and now lives in Northumberland. She has worked in editing, literacy and higher education and has a PhD in contemporary women’s poetry from London University. Her first collection, The Spar Box, came out in 2006 and was a PBS Pamphlet Choice. Winner of an Eric Gregory Award, The Norman MacCaig Centenary Prize, The Andrew Waterhouse Northern Promise Award and the Scotsman Haiku Prize among others. He second collection, Overwintering, was published by Carcanet in 2012.
Images: Vetatur Fumare: "Wife's hairbrush up-close" and Beverly Goodwin: "Nautical knot".