More poems from week 2 of Poetry Toolkit, based on observations in the week
Invisible Woman

The pool
Adults only, lunchtime,
Empty, quiet, no thumping soundtrack.
Muffled bangs from the gym.
Ploughing up and down an imaginary lane,
No ropes.
Suddenly a guy saunters round, slips in,
 No stairs for him,

Swims the crawl straight towards  me.
Unbelievable.
I have to veer to avoid him.

I’m invisible, seems he never even saw me.
Old woman.
Been swimming here for a decade or more.
No woman has ever done this to me.

An awful noise

In the restaurant I say
“We want a quiet table
So we can actually talk to each other”.

We get a quizzical look – two woman who want to talk,
To each other?

The noise is awful,
Too many people talking too loudly
Because they can’t hear each other,
Because the noise is awful.

Tesco

Just popped in to the big one for some crisp breads
The atmosphere is horrid.
It’s the middle of the morning on a weekday
Everyone looks harassed
Nobody’s smiling.
Kids being shouted at for wandering off, picking things up, bored,
And doing what kids do.
There’s a palpable tension
Women with lists and a mounting bill
Trying to juggle a ‘quart into a pint pot’
My mother says in my head.

I remember my first Sainsbury’s in the 1960s
The excitement of getting
Lots of different things in one place.
Food we’d never seen
Avocados, fruit or a vegetable?
There was a time when it was fun,
Now it’s just a trial
And we long for the old individual shops
Of the Ladybird ‘Going Shopping’ book.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

On the morning of 17th July 2007 I was particularly happy. Summer Term had just ended so I had 6 weeks of holiday from my Teaching Assistant job ahead, my husband was coming back from a 3 week research visit to Australia on Friday and my first grandchild was due in August. Life seemed very good – I was listening to Women's Hour, and my 16 year old son was asleep as usual upstairs. I felt a need to rush to the downstairs toilet and whilst sitting there fell forward with agonising and unexpected pain. I recall trying to shout my son's name but being able to do so only weakly. After what seemed like hours, he arrived sleepily at the toilet door and asked what was wrong. I replied 'this is the worst pain since childbirth' (already acknowledged in my family as the gold standard for pain after two 3 day labours!) and he said' better ring an ambulance then'……I recall a paramedic trying to open the toilet door to get to me, and then... I awoke 8 days later in Intensi
Read more

Starting to write

I want to write but I don't know yet how to self-start so I'm using the blog as an imaginary teacher telling me that I have to produce some writing each day. I don't need it to be read but it would be a bonus. My first attempt is from a writing class where the participants were given a tomato - I've ended it too quickly I think with a rather woman's magazine story last line but I'm not sure where to go with it now - expand it to a normal short story length or not? Tomatoes She crossed tomatoes off her shopping list with an aching heart. He’d always loved them. As a baby, she’d pushed him down to the shops, her bag was too full and she’s rested the tomatoes in their plastic container on his lap as he seemed to be asleep. It was a long weary walk back up the hill to the house, and she was thinking of other things, so it wasn’t until she looked down at him as she opened the gate, that she realised they’d all gone – he had steadily and quietly eaten his way thro
Read more

Short story course 2014

The Right Place Thom wasn’t one for moving unnecessarily, so sitting on the porch in the sun came easily to him. Which is how he came to be in just the right place at the right time. The stranger came up the street slowly, staring at each house intently as if trying to trigger some long-lost memory. It took him a good ten minutes to reach Thom’s porch which gave Thom long enough to get his story straight. The man was only about thirty, well-dressed, educated-looking, with an air of enthusiasm that Thom has left long behind. As he approached the porch, the stranger smiled and held out his hand.             “James Roberts” Thom chewed his tobacco slowly, nodded and reached forward to clasp the proffered hand.             ‘I’m looking for my family- they moved here in ’27, to Main Street, Hammond. I’m hoping to find someone who remembers them”             “Roberts” said Thom slowly, as if in deep thought and remembrance.             “Mary and John”, adde
Read more