Metamorphoses
You tell our daughter
that by this time next year
she will grow another foot.
She looks down, says
she’d rather a cat’s tail,
and bull horns on me
along with a full to bursting,
blue-veiny udder.
And she wants you with
heron wings, so huge
that when they’re flapped
the ornaments
we never meant to accumulate,
on a mantle piece we didn’t expect,
would leap and shatter.
On dehumidified air curls a phrase
of a song from years ago, one of those
I can’t choose to listen to
because of the direct tunnel it opens
to something we aren’t any more –
just for now.
We part to different rooms
and wait
for a lamb’s shoulder to cease bleeding.
How the sweet fat changes everything.
Graham Clifford‘s pamphlet Welcome Back to the Country is published by Seren, who will also be publishing his book, The Hitting Game, next year. Read more at www.grahamclifford.co.uk . Graham is a graduate of the University of East Anglia’s Creative Writing MA. He blogs at grahamcliffordpoet.wordpress.com