Blackmoor Village
I walk to my aunt’s house. A journey that was, in reverse, so long to me as a child. The way the landscape altered from housing estate to housing estate. A strip of grass reduced to clay. A golf course. A cemetery. Green spaces expecting nothing. I no longer see the dead zones, those once unfathomable pockets between place names, that, to my finding-the-worldness, sent shivers through my clumsy trying. Instead there’s money, habit, and what they do and do not do to the environment. Buildings shrink, become quaint melting pots of deceit. Concrete slabs (magic carpets) centred in patches of untaken grass have been exhumed to make way for yet another patriotic monument. We have all fallen. My mother pulled up (with my child, no less) to offer me a lift, save me the effort of the journey (save me): a kind of haunting. I am seen, always. Without effort, there is only waiting. Barbershops are opening up in the village, remembering the name of the village, using the name of the village as a badge of distinction, undermining the village, mining the village.
Exist in the Kitchen
Most of the doors open to
me were round the back. I didn’t need to knock, the only requirement was that I
take my shoes off. A friend was in a living room watching Freddy Kruger and
ironing pre-folded clothes
(less work that way, and
the money was the same). Another friend was sneaking cigarettes from a
half-full packet on a microwave (I’d stand there). Though we no longer lived in
the kitchen, that way of going in remained a hangover from previous slum
days.
The last door left open to me, by which I mean unlocked, is down a narrow pathway at the side of the building. The gate clicks open. A knocker with a lion face I remember reaching up to once. Transported (both me and it), brought along for the ride (both me and it), relegated to the sidelines (both me and it). I ring the bell now. I wait outside the porch. I hesitate. I text before I go I don’t go. I don’t text.
An Estate at Bay
There was a danger there. The size? The shape? The lack of history? The recent waste? It was never fully explained. Stay off the estate. Like we were any better off on the straight-backed A-road. A corner house is open to attack. The night our car was stolen I was awake. Heard the door crack. In the morning, the side-drive with the roof of corrugated plastic was a vacant lot.
Once, my father, fumbling for keys in a jacket or a bag, saw a silhouette (refracted, eager) through a stained-glass door patch. Watched my trousers being robbed, my collection of CDs get siphoned off, my brother’s joypad (just the one) being unplugged from its socket and promptly pocketed. The back door opened and he thought, What’s that? He’d thought it was me. (Where was I going? Why was I ignoring him?) He shouted after me, ordered me to come back. And in my mind I see what at times I still think of as my own near miss, make tracks.
No Action Was Taken
Despite the resolve of the child to make something of its life, it lacked the necessary singleness of mind to walk in any real kind of straight line. Drinks were hoarded out of the sliding side-doors of plain white vehicles. Men working in the service industry were dishing it out for free. As were we, our gobby litttle fishmouths opening and shutting, opening and shutting, coming up for air and eating all the carbohydrates. No matter if it’s not what we’re used to. It’s the water I love, the way it’s thick enough to limb through. We push it away. Liquid makes space for structural certainty. Quick movements. Rolling down a hill, loose tyres, like when you begin to explain a thing and all the peripheral detail comes waltzing in to penetrate the listener’s membrane. I can’t give it to you in the street anymore, someone might see, next time you come with me down the lane.
Nights Have Long Been Lit Up By These Steady Bulbs
Council-powered lighthouses pulse the half-drawn curtains. We don’t want to be seen / we don’t want to be alone. Two dogs and a kennel, a scrap of flowers, a tuft, some turf, a tree, two dogs in a kennel, three horses, three horses, two dogs, two horses. All in shades of beige or brown. Maddening night loops, our adherence to pattern. I postered over the wallpaper until I moved out. Long fingers of electricity. Poke me awake. Me and the current. The doppler hum. The intermittent rounds of light. The garage is open. Is always open. Our North star is dying no doubt. A white throb surrounded by warning red in the otherwise lull of a town checked out. A glass shield. A small gap. Smaller hands. We can buy anything in the fade-out.
Lydia Unsworth’s latest collections are Arthropod (Death of Workers) and Mortar (Osmosis). Pamphlets include Residue (above/ground), cement, terraces (Red Ceilings), and YIELD (KFS). Poems in places like Ambit, Banshee, Bath Magg, Blackbox Manifold, Oxford Poetry, PERVERSE, and Shearsman. These poems are from These Steady Bulbs, forthcoming in January with above/ground press.
Photo credit: Liza Stokport