Anatomy of a Headache
I’ve tried everything else;
the blister packs, the fizzing orange juice,
the pressure points between the thumbs,
now I will ask poetry to help:
Please come and papercut
my face apart
and have a look about.
* * *
The poem as an endoscope:
let words fill the asyndeton
of passageways linking nose to eye to ear
let the page show
what should not be there,
that which wants to escape.
* * *
We can see rooms within rooms
strip-lit and a-buzz
with someone laughing
for a thousand years
and if those years were sped up
and crammed into one day;
played back at full volume
through headphones
to the centre
of the head,
then, would we be getting close?
Would we be tapping on the window?
* * *
Headaches can take on human form –
the light bleeding across the face
of someone on the edge of a family photo;
the half-form of an old lady
in the back seat
of a Ford;
a man poking out of the corn;
a ghost baby in the scan;
the extra in our midst
in census figures,
heavy breathing
on the phone.
* * *
You can pull a duvet from the throat,
start with the corners and pull.
Whereas a headache
is a bubble in a spirit gauge.
(if you break it,
it’s as if it was never
there at all.)
* * *
I’ve lost track of the days
under a smog of heavy felt.
“Roll invisible bandages around the head
dispensed from a cold can of coke”
(I follow the instructions through the undergrowth)
“whilst slowly removing the endoscope.”
* * *
The headache is becoming shy,
slipping back to its own shadows,
rustling as it moves, like someone opening tin foil
during a film.
* * *
It’s Tuesday.
*Andrew McDonnell (b.1977) is a poet who is (creatively) interested in gaps and elisions. He lives in Norwich.
