{"id":1207,"date":"2008-04-03T18:10:42","date_gmt":"2008-04-03T18:10:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=1207"},"modified":"2008-04-03T18:10:42","modified_gmt":"2008-04-03T18:10:42","slug":"two-poems-by-rebecca-duffy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/two-poems-by-rebecca-duffy\/","title":{"rendered":"Two poems by Rebecca Duffy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dance Hall<\/span>


I\u2019d known him since a little boy. Sixteen,<\/span>
he was, he got a job and disappeared,<\/span>
to America, they said. The movies.<\/span>
And then, at the parish Christmas do,<\/span>
was George himself, lighting a fag. He smiled<\/span>
and said he\u2019d show me how to jive.  He drove<\/span>
an Austin – Speedwell Blue it was – and told <\/span>
me we\u2019d be rich. Well, I laughed!<\/span>
I mean, what <\/span>would<\/span> I say to Fred Astaire?<\/span>
I made the parts for false teeth,<\/span>
and waltzed in our kitchen with a broom.<\/span>

        So strange, <\/span>
how it was done, <\/span>stop-start-stop,<\/span> <\/span>
the men holding clapperboards and booms. <\/span>
George told me just to think of him,<\/span>
the parish hall at Christmas, not to look towards <\/span>
the camera\u2019s black mouth. The other girls<\/span>
were right proper. Actressy. Diana Dors. <\/span>
I liked her, though she couldn\u2019t dance. <\/span>

I waited for his letters. <\/span>

On the gogglebox today, <\/span>
it shocked me though, to see my legs again.<\/span>
I don\u2019t wear stockings now. Boys on skateboards stare. <\/span>
Boat rigging claps into the wind. <\/span>
I hold the promenade rails, and begin: <\/span>

one-step, double-step, one-step.<\/span>


~ ~ ~ ~ ~<\/span>


Birthplace<\/span>


We sweep away the webs of moss which spool <\/span>
across the granite, and, removing gloves, <\/span>
dig out the flattened soil, so pots can lodge.<\/span>
Our fingers freeze, and breathing clouds the air. <\/span>
A yellow watering can stands by the wall,<\/span>
this is the church with the cold benches,<\/span>
where the old Polish priest pinched my cheek. <\/span>
We cycled to that low-ceilinged school,<\/span>
just over there, now quiet for the holidays. <\/span>
On the hillside, streetlamps blink through mist.<\/span>

He would have been eighty yesterday.<\/span>
Cigarette, cup of tea, old brown dressing gown,<\/span>
banished to the greenhouse at first light.<\/span>
The plants didn\u2019t mind the smoke, he said, <\/span>
in fact, they liked it. Every day, a blackbird <\/span>
floated down, and waited, beseechingly, for grubs.<\/span>

At my sister\u2019s house, I scrub my hands, <\/span>
the earth circles into water, disappears.<\/span>
The Boston fern has new growth, uncoiling<\/span>
from its heart. Hirsute, white-green, implacable.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Rebecca Duffy is a part time student on the MA Creative Writing and Authorship programme at the University of Sussex. She says “My idea of happiness is getting my writing published and riding my bike.”
<\/span>
<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dance HallI\u2019d known him since a little boy. Sixteen,he was, he got a job and disappeared,to America, they said. The movies.And then, at the parish Christmas do,was George himself, lighting a fag. He smiledand said he\u2019d show me how to jive.  He drovean Austin – Speedwell Blue it was – and told me we\u2019d be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1207\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}