Catherine Kelly: Three Poems
Contracts
n
Remember the bomb at Miss World?
Both the flour and the real attempt, less
like an appetite more like a literacy test
the way they make these kids think
about grammar schools cannot be right. Considering this
why am I still here? I kept falling in love
and signing contracts. I could believe
a king was traumatised at boarding school
this is a shared reality it doesn’t matter
shudder to think how little you like
what you decide.
One eye on the pageant that broke
the boycott the other
on Ofsted, the poster says
school is a crime scene!
We hope to supersede
less like filling a pail more like a blaze in
the distance behind you before you: remember
the bomb at Miss World
Jennifer
n
Somebody's "Jennifer"'s missing
in tesco. Weatherman reader nothing
so oracular, Jennifer
could be a dog or a child
or a grandmother. A sort of normal
woman is looking for her
circling the aisles retracing the aisles going up and down the aisles
and even as I mind my business
(one pocket: honey, the other: olive oil)
I’m absolutely driven
to distraction knees on hardwood
floorboards camp’s a trick question
with an honest answer
and it takes a while to get it
right. And then:
just like water
hitting the rim of the bath she said:
Eureka!
They reconcile. This woman and
Jennifer. In the yellow glow of the anti-theft labels
they meet with force. Other ingredients tremble
around them: parsnips carrots raw eggs turning in their shells
squeaking on lino dancehall floors no.4
on the menu has heat oil and
artichokes eating out of the pit
of their heads. I’d say
mother and daughter, leaving together
arm in arm via the cash
register. Rejoicing: it’s almost
the end of the year. I hold tinsel
on a deadline, had a postcard
in my mind I was too sick
to send said miss you like crazy!
Keep it light, things these days are
viciously delayed
n
PFI
So for example, there’s a motorway
that you’ve been dreaming of – in this dream you’re a government
and you have to get from A to B.
The train from Hull is down two
days out of three and you miss your mother. So, the road:
you can almost taste it. For context, it’s 1992.
Before you fall into despair, you must remember the PPPs
These are the ties that bind and although
the acronym is lost to time
we think of it fondly, even now.
Some routes have changed.
Governments don’t have dreams or mothers or places to get to.
The motorway is built at night. Cat’s eyes rising wick
by wick and sometimes the line that marks the edges
makes an entrance.
Someone always has a joke to tell from the passenger seat
and other things are like this too:
lightbulbs/golf balls/marbles – the engine dreams
it’s Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady when she swallows
a marble and doesn’t choke. The immortal English
language has a palm like a heel. The engine talks like
a cat and other things can do this too
and still be understood. The cat dreams
it’s the car from Grease
making its final departure.
n
Catherine Kelly is a PhD student at King's College London. Her work has been published in Datableed, Spam and the Chicago Review. These poems were first published in Still Point Issue 7 (2024).
