ironing

opened the ironing board
poppy seed smells then
sandalwood-ylang-ylang-jasmine
My Sin
dabbed on my wrists
 
in ‘71

pressed the dress
cupboard musk flowers expand me dream squares the Rothko Chapel

held it against me in front of the mirror the
wireless Dionne Beatles Warwick Stones the Dylan Band Easy
Beats
and Brahms
sausage shafts sunshine mellow forest canopy Bavarian barns

Mahler’s Titan looms my bedroom sunrise in jeans and nothing else in my white night dress my legs hot warned me about this
and closed the ironing board

ounces of boyfriend wet nasturtiums tumbling from the shelf beach shells and I’m

trawling the void
fragments of fish jetty no more Movietone the spindled segments of angels nuns softcover romance I’m

dragging the quantum vacuum
abdominal wounds insist flavour of milkshakes Pepsi it’s all about India why my father abandoned

granularity – and I’m breathing in leaves and at
oh two hundred hours grey pilots leap from their bunks
in one minute droning the channel they wish a photograph of diana/molly pressed
in their pocket
would protect ack ack the simulacrum the code in the night the radio silence and if they go down

there’s a strong possibility cognitive affective impairment only the miraculous sonnets
of Master Wu
wine in an eggshell ink in a thimble

hard things to remember

when wakened at night your hand fumbles the phone heart pumps you know the news is

bad