Diane Mayr, In the Wings

Inspiration Piece

Rachel Brown, Movement

Response

Could she bring them with her?
– she wondered, almost out loud –
those wings of possibility,
that fluttered around her?

She’d grown accustomed
to their swoosh, their constant pushing
against the air.
She’d grown accustomed

to her own stillness, to the act
of waiting.
She knew
that once she made the choice
reversal was impossible,
she’d simply slide

along the path,
picking up speed as she went along.
That was the scariest part: careening
down a one way street,
without a wheel to turn
or the earth to hold onto.

It felt like centuries of stillness
before the first of the butterflies
left her, pushing
its black and blue torso
and its pale yellow wings
into the world
crisp, decisive
meeting the white glare of the sun,
silver through the clouds.

She felt the squirm
of the beetle’s legs,
causing her own feet
to itch

But still
she was suspended
as all the possibility around her began to move –
still,
she could bear only to ask about the world,
but not to embrace it –
as if slipping a finger out the door to test the weather,
but never emerging into its embrace

How long? –
she wondered –
could she stay like this?
trapped
inside herself
as all the possibility escaped her,
made its way into the world

Shining like a dragonfly
when it breaks from a long stand
into the air.

Rachel Brown, Through The Kitchen, Into the Sea

Response

A sea change at the fish ‘n’ chip shop

After ‘The only son at the fish ‘n’ chip shop’ by Geoff Hattersley

Helen Lewis

Inspiration Piece

Before I break the news to mother
I down a couple of pints.
“Well, Gerald,” she says,
“It’s about bloody time.”

Maureen knows how to talk to the customers.
She wears high heels and red nails.
She cuts the size labels
from her regulation tabards.

Maureen’s been to Spain and Old Trafford.
While I’m carving the kebab meat,
she talks about her holiday in Turkey.
I say I don’t think I should like the heat.

Maureen scribbles poems on chip paper;
they’re not very good – they don’t even rhyme.
I tell her about my novel and she asks to read it.
I say I’ll show her when it’s finished.

She asks me to marry her
one Saturday after closing time.
We’re alone in the back room,
counting the takings.

The strip light flickers.
The fly killer buzzes
blue lightning.
I say yes.

I’m sick of the smell of chip fat
under my shirt collar,
and the oil-slick air
above the fryers.

Maureen says chip fat’s liquid gold.
“There are going to be
some changes around here
when I’m in charge,” she says.