Valerie Laws Poems

‘I must get back to the men, ' my mother announces,
Then slyly meets my eye, as I choose, this time,
To avoid my usual reply. ‘I know what you're thinking! '
She's triumphant. ‘That there's only one of them! But
...

Third anniversary of my mother's death from dementia,
And I'm looking at slices of brain, stained pretty pink,
The neurones purplish, their nuclei clear as strawberry pips.
...

Slice after slice, she has dished up her sleep to them,
keeping only the smallest piece for herself.
Now, tiredness keeps her warm, like fur.
She's up before dawn, alone,
...

My heart used to beat in the swift,
sharp tap of my high heels,
pecking out the rhythm of my blood. Now
heart and feet are out of step,
...

Excited, she tugs me up to her bedroom of thirty years.
‘Look! There's all this here! ' A sweep of her arm presents
Melamine wardrobes with fancy handles, the swagged
Pink curtains she sewed herself. Back downstairs,
...

I hold this human spine like a rosary of bone,
fingering the winged vertebrae.
I stack them to nest snugly
in totem poles of little trolls;
...

The desert, seen from high above, is scrawled
With the wind's mysterious graffiti. I try to read
These hieroglyphs: wavy lines, claw marks, a group
Of neat horseshoes like sheepfolds. Even a cluster
...

Inside, all our brains are black. I've seen it, fossil traces
Of how we all looked, when melanin shaded us
From the burn and blight of African sun. Those born
Pale sickened, became nobody's ancestors. We children
...

I said to my mother's heart, stop
Please stop. I said it when my father left
The room, weeping. Cups of tea, Co-op
Sandwiches, the toilet, divided up our days,
...

Full fathom five in A&E, my father
Lies white as a cuttlefish blade, suddenly granted
The sailor's death war denied him. Water runs
Clear from his mouth and the puncture wounds
...