The Memory Bank
i.
Rows of multi-coloured tallboys, tarnished
brass drawer-pull-handles like the waning gibbous moon.
Hardwood needing a rub with wire wool and beeswax.
A dispensary of memories – the ones you mine
your mind for. Make withdrawals
from this sensory treasury.
Feel the flock of the frock
you wore to your cousin’s wedding.
A dress unzipping several evocations: music
from the reception disco, scent of Coolwater
aftershave on the boy you danced
the slow set with. Feel ceramic of a hotel bathroom,
hurling tacky tequila shots. Salt
and sting of lemon on your cut lip.
ii.
You will make an appointment
for your octogenarian mother, who cannot
remember buying her gold wedding shoes
with pointed toes and stiletto heels.
You are clutching the plastic handle
of the British Home Stores shopping bag
in your recall, the uneasiness of cobbles
on Castle Street, the smooth satin ballet pumps
in their clear plastic wrapper.
Purchased during lunchbreak
and back to your desk to input
overtime figures to the payroll.
iii.
Your daughter visited the memory bank last week
and when the clerk asked if there was something specific
she was looking for, she smiled
and rocked cradled arms
saying “I want to see myself
being passed around as a baby.
To see my first visit with Granny,
to Galway at six weeks old,
to recapture the glint in my great-aunt’s eye,
to feel the downy regrowth of white hair
and smell body butter on chemo-thin skin.”
Gaynor Kane is a Northern Irish poet from Belfast who came to writing late and is trying to make up for time. It isn’t going too badly and you can read some sample poems on her website.To keep up in touch please follow her on Twitter @gaynorkane or Instragram @gaynorkanepoet