{"id":486,"date":"2012-01-05T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-01-05T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=486"},"modified":"2020-12-14T11:15:33","modified_gmt":"2020-12-14T11:15:33","slug":"the-twelfth-day-of-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/the-twelfth-day-of-christmas\/","title":{"rendered":"The Twelfth Day of Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Winter<\/span>

Polish is spoken here and mountains have appeared behind <\/span>
the closed down meat pie factory.  Bears roll their snouts like drunks,<\/span>
lumber down the mountains, lick sticky locked-up gates, globules <\/span>
of gristle stuck in rusted padlocks.  All of us, bears, wolves, <\/span>
humans, raise our heads on windswept days, inhale memories <\/span>
of bubbling hearts, intestines, ears, blood.          Where there was once a <\/span>
brewery there is now a flood of frozen weather.  They\u2019re<\/span>
playing violins around the edges, frying herrings,<\/span>
the smell of beer rising as skating couples bite into <\/span>
the ice.     Someone has bought clippers to shave young men\u2019s heads in<\/span>
kitchens drinking black, Happy Shopper tea.  <\/span>Here is number <\/span>
for room, for work in nice, clean-smelling factory.<\/span>        Outside <\/span>
the Catholic Church old women stamp snow, wear fur at their throats,<\/span>
dab Holy Water like cologne.        After Christmas, we will <\/span>
open our windows, fill our houses with tripe and sweetened <\/span>
cabbages.      New Year drifts in from the sewage treatment works.<\/span>


*Josephine Corcoran<\/a><\/span> writes poems, plays and short stories.  She has had work on BBC R4 and at The Chelsea Centre Theatre, London SW3.  Recent poems are in <\/span>The Bridport Prize Anthology<\/span> 2010 and forthcoming in<\/span> Grist 2012<\/span>.<\/span>



Ice Bonds<\/span>

The wind chill wails through the chippy\u2019s sign,<\/span>
icicles quiver and drip from the post-office windowsill,<\/span>
the paper-shop window frills with snow crystals.<\/span>

Dawn is wide behind the shops <\/span>
where winter is bejewelled with diamonds on the scrub,<\/span>
where the early sun softens a rainbow over the stream,<\/span>
where the cold is purifying.<\/span>

The angels coated in this purity are stung<\/span>
with frozen tears, with frosted wings. <\/span>
Nothing is warmed by these crunches underfoot.<\/span>
The ice is roaming, catching my breath<\/span>
I taste the bite. Look, how the bells are still,<\/span>
how the gargoyles drool is frozen.<\/span>


*Lynn Woollacott<\/a><\/span> sends a Chinese New Year Blessing: May you have success in all endeavours, may you have peace and health in the four seasons, may your happiness be as wide as the sea, may all your comings and goings be peaceful.<\/span>
<\/p>\n



Twelfth Night<\/span>
  <\/span>
It ends with the boiling of bones.<\/span>
Flesh leaves the ribs as easily<\/span>
as pine needles leave dry branches.<\/span>
 <\/span>
An old carcass in grey water<\/span>
shrouded by its own grease.<\/span>
It ends with the boiling of bones.<\/span>



*Rebecca Farmer<\/span>\u2019s work has been published widely, most recently in The North and The South Bank Magazine. She has an MA in Creative and Life Writing from Goldsmiths.<\/span>
<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WinterPolish is spoken here and mountains have appeared behind the closed down meat pie factory.  Bears roll their snouts like drunks,lumber down the mountains, lick sticky locked-up gates, globules of gristle stuck in rusted padlocks.  All of us, bears, wolves, humans, raise our heads on windswept days, inhale memories of bubbling hearts, intestines, ears, blood. […]<\/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":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-twelve-days-of-christmas-2011"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486","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=486"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23923,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486\/revisions\/23923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}