At Dinner
(after a sculpture by Eusebio Sempere)
You appear in the hallway,
a shimmying fish-skeleton,
your bones, tin-foil.
We fill each other’s wine glasses.
We try to hold a conversation.
Turn our backs on you.
In the end we switch off the hall light
But we can still hear your
susurrating scales,
turning, clock-wise,
widdershins. We can’t think.
All night you spin and shiver in our imaginations.
Pam Thompson is a poet, lecturer, reviewer and writing tutor based in Leicester. Her publications include The Japan Quiz ( Redbeck Press, 2009) and Show Date and Time, (Smith | Doorstop, 2006). Pam has a PhD in Creative Writing and her second collection, Strange Fashion, was recently published by Pindrop Press. pamthompsonpoetry@wordpress.com