Val Whitlock reading Fissure
Fissure
by Val Whitlock
If you could slit the black, sucked-in skin,
you’d find her there, alone in a chasmic closet.
On such a winter’s day it’s full of all the leaves.
They are red and yellow and green and brown
and titian and bronze and ochre and peach
and amber and olive and ecru and fawn
and copper and gold and chocolate and beige
and sorrel and henna and hazel and rust
and auburn and ginger and russet and tan
and tawny and nut and umber and orange
and desolate blue
<
She’s a Matryoshka Prune-Shaped Tardis doll.
Who would risk it?
Turning the tops, pulling them off
one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by
The fear of finding never-ending
Pain
too hard to bear
Yours or mine?
<
It’s a fat-suit, Klomp-hard, and she’s crammed inside.
No give. No flex. No blooming space.
‘Let me out’, she screams in the bleak
‘Can’t you see me in here?’
But after all these years, she’s virtually invisible.
<
Matryoshka. ‘Little matron’. Mater. Mother.
A fertility doll.
And all the dolls are her children. Holding hands across kin and clans.
Keep holding tight, my love.
<
All those Matryoshka tops
Peeling peeling peeling peeling
But even so, who can ever really
know?
<
When she steps outside the Prune-Shaped Tardis she’s like a colander.
And sticking a finger in a hole in a dyke won’t stop it caving in.
Try to fill the titanic void. Plug up unpluggable holes.
<
When
Why don’t you get this?
feels like
why don’t you get this?
<
A prune is what’s left.
A handy thing to call upon. For the odd occasion when you need that quick remedy.
Though never a sugar plum fairy.
No comfit.
For her. The dried out. The withered.
The absence of flourish.
<
Prune. Never sugar coats it. Speaks its mind.
The yearn to expunge. And to cleanse.
<
But you can’t put new wine in old wineskins
And the ache to shed a skin. To step outside of it all and start over
<
and inside the Prune-Shaped Tardis, she wonders if she really exists
<
Slice the shrivelled Prune-Shaped Tardis skin
interior spherical photo-backdrop white
lightless weightless erstwhile
and centre-slapped
a slopped scribble
a mooning human doodle
she’s not really this screwed up
she’s just drawn that way
<
Oval Matryoshka
Ova-less Prune-shaped Tardis
<
Where are you all, you figurine family?
<
There they all are. Lined up in a row.
And here we go again. Pulling off tops.
Nothing inside
Nothing inside
Nothing inside
Nothing inside
Nothing inside
Two pills
Do you do it?
Or pin your hope on that last, tiny doll.
Unopenable.
Which?
<
Lucky seven
or seven ages
end to end
this tender night
give me a child
until she is seven
tiny and exquisitely chiselled
and each one that follows
is fashioned around it precisely
the same apart from its greater
size and outward embellishment
as if with the finest
of brush strokes
Sunday’s Child
on Wednesday
<
Woodentop
she is lumber, shelved
she gazes out from paint-glazed eyes
gathers herself for the cursory feather dusting.
‘I am all hollow,’
her dark insides yowl.
‘Knock would you
knock on my temple block
random rhythmic blurts
make me reel
drill will you
drill fine deep holes
in my ocarina head
blow blow you winter gale
fill me, balloon me, smithereen me
make me feel
very very
breathe me some euphony
from these cinders’
<
she puts on her uniform
ornate and vividly patterned,
glossy, jaunty,
people meet her in the crowd
jovial, smiling
and have no clue
<
Once it was so vast inside it was stacked with possibilities.
Prospects. Options.
Rocket Boots.