Elizabeth is hiding in the cupboard under the sink
Small enough to fold between cream cleaner and floor polish
Too big to keep elbows away from wire wool

You wouldn’t believe how quick they grew —
Our babies were men now. Lifting bags of concrete
they rebuilt cities, slab by slab, reinforcing cracks.

I’d asked for this not to be recorded;
this failure on my part, to be a good
parent; 

monkey mathematics

A monkey grabs one nut here, one nut
there, and two more over there.
He counts them with care.

I find six errors in the proofreading manual & the irony doesn’t tickle me.
I am enraged by typos, poor formatting, missing commas. This is my Big Girl Job,
the one I always wanted —

What seems to be the problem ? He asks
in that slightly condescending tone.
Seems,     I think,      Seems.
It seems, I say,
that I have a problem with my inner fish,

My Dad once dismissed a friend as a hypocrite,
which I took to be an induction to the truth.
Lately though, I think the things I love in you
I love because they’re grossly inconsistent.

We are eating dessert when the urge overcomes her
to scrawl mathematics, the night ticks on

Tom Giles once asked me if I had tools and at that
time I didn’t because I was fifteen maybe sixteen