The Voice of the Lacuna!

So this is my autobiographical submission for my TMA 04 (fourth tutor marked assignment) for my current creative writing course. I chose to start the memory poem with my morning walk and remembering my mother, who died two months ago. The paper cut might have to be re-photographed as I'm not happy the image but apart from that I'm fairly happy. 

The Voice of a Lacuna Conjured Up With Smoke and Mirrors

      i. Violets: For the Woman Behind the Camera.

It was bitter today. A low winter sun shone without warmth.

I walked, remembering you, while tiny ice sparks blew

against my face. It was trying to snow and I was trying to forget.

The violets were out, not knowing it was early, scenting the air

with funerary florals. Memories of you came and went with

ice shards and violets; stinging, elusive, recurring, and I remembered…

Violet scent, once registered by olfactory receptors, temporarily nullifies them before reemerging, like a magic trick or flashes of memory.

ii I Learned the Truth at Seventeen, Waiting Silently, in the Wings

Backstage spaces are cousins of soft black nihility.

Curtain hyphens cleaving scenes

and the unseen, sundry assemblages (animate /

inanimate) quartered backstage, redundant props await

reanimation; whilst mirrored front of house, we actors glimpse

our spectral viewers, props to our staged universe.

‘At Seventeen’ from ‘Between the Lines’ by Janis Ian, released 1975

iii.    Faust the Magician presents: The Girl Without a Middle, Sword Cabinet Illusion

Wanted: Assistant for world famous magician.

Must be biddable, willing to work in small spaces and have current passport. Experience unnecessary. Dancer preferred. Must provide own tights.

                                                          The Stage, 1978

The auditorium doors whoosh and click, like an intake of breath,

the smacking of lips, begins your journey to the land of Sleight of

Hand; my world, where brief life span’s of three-minute illusions

are circumscribed by black tape crosses, a designated spot, invisible

to audiences, each player knows their station. Each person, prop

seemingly randomly stowed, occupying that ordained position,

receiving brief moments under a dazzling electric sun.        Basking

centre-stage – ominously costumed as Fu Manchu – Faust the Magician, 

Master of Ceremonies, the named one, holds - spellbound -

the phantasmal faces beyond his stygian domain.

I make my entrance, his glittering assistant, Eve to his Adam

in a treeless dominion. I’m briefly named, quickly replaced,

forgotten. I am the costume, the flesh, his foil.    My role…

walk stage left,   I am spot-lit sparkle,  walk stage right

rotate           centre stage, to demonstrate       I’m whole.

Retreating, I stand within the cabinet. Receding into the gilt

and black lacquer, my casket, arms sacrificially crossed at my

chest. Kimono sleeves swishing decorously, he shuts the doors

leaving me         head and legs        exposed. Am I thinking? Breathing?  

He wields a sword,                    slices            a floating silk scarf

Drives the blade home         through           the cabinet’s side

Ritualised gestures,      pierces, daggers    beneath my smiles.

Ceremoniously rotates    the cabinet,        nothing behind.

With accomplished flourish, he swings the doors wide, reveals

the woman                                                  with no middle.

Can I be human at all?  I have a head, perhaps a brain; but observe

my inane grin, these blades for ribs! Can you be certain these are real legs? 

I’m hardly a woman, perhaps a rhinestone automaton. Obscured behind

my black false wall, subsumed into your perceptions of the magical.

iv. Mum and Me on N54 (All-Night-Bus) to Bellingham

How you’d laugh riding home, me in full slap, aping Faust, the Magician,

‘is Lancashire accent kep’ slippin’ out. There’s no smoke an’ mirrors, Mam,

tha’ knows’ ------ just contortions and negations behind black hyphens.