The First Thing I Ever Stole
A thrupenny bit from my mother’s purse
because she wouldn’t give me money for the tuck shop
and because she’d never miss it
and because I could
and because of red lollies and sherbert dabs and black jacks
and because it made me feel normal
and because of my baby brother
and because no-one noticed where I was
and because I liked the feel of it in my pocket
and because I could think of it all through arithmetic
and because Gillian might be my friend now
and because I didn’t believe in baby Jesus
and because I knew it was wrong but I did it anyway
and because actually I was the Queen of the whole wide world
and because she could always get more coins from the post office
and because when I put my hand in her coat pocket
the purse was warm and soft and the coin was cold and hard and real.
Carole Bromley lives in York. Two pamphlets and a full length collection, A Guided Tour of the Ice House, from Smith/Doorstop. Writes a poetry blog at www.yorkmix.com Website www.carolebromleypoetry.co.uk
What Remains
I got the Malta album,
mostly black and white photos
and a set of colour postcards.
The black and white photos
spark Technicolor memories,
show an unexceptional family.
The black and white photos
show my parents in love,
glow with light from the sea,
record how quickly we grew,
my sister, already a beauty,
my brother asleep, me, scowling.
The black and white photos
list the cars we hired; The Singer,
The Morris, The Mayflower,
to drive round the island
like well-mannered tourists,
Moorish in long sleeves and scarves.
The black and white photos
have dying glue on the corners,
when they fall out I turn them over
and find my Dad’s neat writing,
recording the dates and places,
no need of the names; it’s always us.
The only other thing I have,
my Horby 0-gauge clockwork key
for the train set that started my trip
towards my self, aged five, already
truculent, headed for rebellion.
I played alone and made my own world.
What remains is distilled by love.
What I see now is that the track is,
and always was, a circle.
Vivien Jones‘ first poetry collection – About Time, Too – was published by Indigo Dreams Publishing in September 2010. In that year she also won the Poetry London Prize. She has completed a second short fiction collection on a theme of women amongst warriors – White Poppies (2012) – with the aid of a Creative Scotland Writer’s Bursary and has adapted two of the stories for theatre performance in 2013. In February 2014 her first e-book – Malta Child – was published – memoirs of four childhood years in Malta in the late 1950s. Her second poetry collection –Short of Breath – will be published in November 2014 by Cultured Llama Press.