Lifesaving practice
We make a strange creature,
him and I. Father and son,
endlessly enacting death and
resurrection in the local pool.
Locked in an awkward embrace,
my back forever to his front.
My heart balancing on his heart;
smooth wet pebble on the jagged rock.
Little point of my embarrassed sex,
crowning the water, sprouting
up from his dull bulb,
sunk deep beneath me.
The web of his giant hand,
clamping my jaw, thumb to the bone,
just by the throat. Paralysing me
into a wall-eyed animal, clutched
somewhere between offspring
and prey.
His powerful beat, pulsing
up through me. Drowning out
the whole of my life. Constant
reminder that I am no more
than a part of him
drifted loose. Forever
to be brought back and
saved for himself.
Paul Fenn studied visual art and sculpture before becoming a film maker. Two of his poems have been longlisted in the National Poetry Competition in the past and he has most recently had poems published in Obsessed with pipework, One Hand Clapping and The Frogmore Papers.