Hannah Lowe Poems

The stork arrived alone one day,
beak sharpened like a bayonet.
All the love you've had turned bad! he sang,
eyes boring through the dingy nets.
He hopped onto the patio.
Good lord! Is this a rented flat?

Behind the shed, albino rats
were nuzzled on a family bed.
He hovered over them, wings spread.
Now this is how you do it! he said.
He speared a worm and sucked it down.
A rented flat, my god, he said.

Inside, I laid my hands around
my lump, my pumpkin-up-the-jumper.
I'd swapped the wine and cigarettes
for goji berries, spent the summer
asleep or stretched in yoga pose,
Utkatasana, Dhyana    ...    

The stork came hopping round the corner
scraped his claw across the door — 
Hello, hello? he called, polite,
then screamed I will not be ignored!
He had a bloody bone to pick,
an oozy piece of mind to share.

I was eight months gone by Halloween.
Kids rang the rented bell in sheets
and slime. I tried "maternal" out
with chocolate limes and fizzy sweets.
The bird shrieked half the witchy night:
For god's sake, are you stupid? Teeth!

I waddled off to pack my case — 
gorillas snoozing on the onesies,
pink booties, pads to catch the blood.
When they tugged that baby out of me
he came up laughing, blessed the midwife
with a fiery arc of golden pee

and through the skylight of the ward
I saw the stork retreat, zigzagging
up into the evening sky,
a fading squawk, the beat of wings.
Then they laid that baby on my chest
to feed, and cut the navel string — 
...

I carry you, a fleck, to Jamaica At the Chinese temple in Kingston
I am sick daily Victor leads me upstairs, says this floor was once
Nights, I hold the bed's edges full of beds where men off the boat
a raft on the rolling sea slept, ate, washed sea salt from their skin,
You inside me, all this hope prayed at the jade altar with two lions
Sweet speck, what will you be? that too, had shipped from China.
Too new to be anything We drive to the old cemetery, not before
I say nothing Victor pays the wild-eyed boy who "guards" the car.
the way I stay silent He might hurt us, the vodka bottle he holds is
about my grandfather made of blue glass. His lips are red and sore.
who beat all his children I stand on my grandfather's small grave,
with a strap pen in hand. I am allowed to write his name on since
The sun burns the cemetery floor the marker has been chipped off,
I am woozy marble sold. Wow crazy day huh, Victor says. An honor
I don't know why I'm here to pay your filial duty to your grandfather?
...

Errol drives me to Treasure Beach It's an old story, the terrible storm
swerving the dark country roads the ship going down, half the sailors
I think about what you will be, your mix drowned, half swimming the
white, black, Chinese, and your father's slate waves, spat hard onto shore
Scottish-Englishness. We cross the Black River Smashed crates, bodies
where they shipped cane sugar and molasses choking on the black sand
upstream past a sign One man stands — What is this place? A woman
for Lover's Leap. The air stinks of sulphur in the trees, one hand raised
Errol drops me at a blue gate. Be safe This is how the Scotsmen came
behind the house, the thin beach why the black people here have red hair
of black sand, the water warm and gray Or the other story, no storm
I am deep before I know it, groundless no wrecked ship. Just the miles
the swell stops the sickness of cane fields and mulatto children named
under a crooked tree, perched on sea rocks McDonald or McArthur for
two fishermen in torn denims, smoking their fathers, who owned them
I dry in the sun. They pass, turn, come close Nothing grows at Lover's Leap
they have rust afros, gold faces splashed with freckles where two runaways
one ripped with muscle, one with eyes cornered by their master, held hands
like razors. What you want here they say and jumped down into the clouds
...

He weighted codfish down with rocks of salt,
sold turning milk, half pounds of musty flour;
offered credit to the customers
he robbed, a yellowed ledger full of ticks
and angry crosses on the shop's back shelf.

Not a word from China all those years,
and in the seamy rooms of Barry Street,
he drank alone, or fanned a hand of cards
to play for company, or climbed the stairs
to toss his money where a dosed girl lay

but the ladies in the beauty parlour
put down their magazines when he walked by,
believed those slim bones made him gentle, tender,
not a man to slap and rope a child
or stab a counter with a gutting knife.

He had an inventory of wives he withered
in the country, their thirteen hungry children
strewn from Heartease Pond to Poor Man's Lane.
The smallest boy, a bed-wetter he gave
a dollar to and dumped, somehow survived.

The only photograph is of his body
in the lignum vitae box he saved for.
Suited, on his bed of emerald silk.
a daughter took it as a souvenir,
as proof at last, thank god, that he was dead.
...

When my brother put his fist through a window
on New Year's Eve, no one noticed until a cold draft
cooled our bodies dancing. There was rainbow light
from a disco ball, silver tinsel round the pictures.
My brother held his arm out to us, palm
upturned, a foot high spray of blood.
This was Ilford, Essex, 1993, nearly midnight,
us all smashed on booze and Ecstasy and Danny,
6 foot 5, folding at the knee, a shiny fin of glass
wedged in his wrist. We walked him to the kitchen,
the good arm slung on someone's neck,
Gary shouting Danny, Darren phoning
for an ambulance, the blood was everywhere. I pressed
a towel across the wound, around the glass
and led him by the hand into the garden, he stumbled
down into the snow, slurring leave it out and I'm OK.
A girl was crying in the doorway, the music carried on,
the bass line thumping as we stood around my brother,
Gary talking gently saying easy fella, Darren
draining Stella in one hand and in the other, holding up
my brother's arm, wet and red, the veins stood out
like branches. I thought that he was dying,
out there in the snow and I got down, I knelt there
on the ice and held my brother, who I never touched
and never told I loved, and even then I couldn't say it
so I listened to the incantation easy fella
and my brother's breathing,
felt him rolling forward, all that weight, Darren
throwing down his can and yelling Danny, don't you dare
and shaking him. My brother's face was grey,
his lips were loose and pale and I
was praying. Somewhere in the street,
there was a siren, there was a girl inside
who blamed herself, there were men with blankets
and a tourniquet, they stopped my brother bleeding,
as the New Year turned, they saved him,
snow was falling hard, they saved us all.
...

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always and is near.
I wake to sleep and keep my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.
from ‘The Waking' by Theodore Roethke
At night, you find me at the oil-lamp, dice in hand.
I say to myself, if I throw a pair of fives
I'll give up this life - the hot slow days
of hurricanes, sweet reek of banana rot,
black fruit on the vine. I want another hand
of chances. I grip the dice and blow
a gust of luck into my fist. I'm dreaming
of England, yes, work, yes, women, riches.
I shake these bone cubes hard, let go.
This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.

The radio fizzes news across the tenement yard -
dazed soldiers sailing home, a weekend cavalcade,
monsoon time coming. I pass dead horses
in the field, dead mules. Men sag like slack suits
in the square. Talk of leaving starts like rain,
slow and spare, a rattle in a can. My tears
aren't for the ship, new places, strange people,
but the loss of my always faces - I mean,
my people, who I know, my places. My sister says
you carry them with you, don't fear.
What falls away is always, and is near.

The ship rocks steady across the ocean.
You ever look out to sea, and on every side
is sky and water, too much too blue?
Thoughts lap at me like waves against the bow,
not where am I, but why and who?
At night, we use our hours up, ten fellows
flocked to someone's sticky room. I roll the dice
or deal for chemmy, brag, pontoon.
We go til dawn, a huddle at the lamp turned low.
I wake to sleep and keep my waking slow.

Some fellow swore there were diamonds
on these streets. Look hard enough in rain
you'll see them. I squint my eyes but what I see
is sunshine on the dock, my sister's white gloves
waving me goodbye. There's no diamonds here,
or if there are, they're under this skin of snow.
Seems the whole world's gone white. I roll my dice
in basements below the English pavements.
I guess I'm learning what I need to know.
I learn by going where I have to go.
...

(1947)

In Liverpool, you walk the dock for hours
In your bag, a box of dominoes, a pair of brogues
In the street, a little girl tut-tuts at you
In your belly, worry rising like the wind, but hold it boy, just hold it
In the tenement house, a bed you swap with other men
in shifts, you pass the afternoons
in dreams - the rooster cawing on the fence, your sisters twisting hands, the smell the smell of uh
In England, you're in England
In the shop, a rock of last week's bread you carry home
in snow, your slipping soles and god knows how the world went white like this
In the street, a woman tutting, crossing over
In your pockets, nothing but a letter, flimsy blue
In the labour queue, ten men ahead the same as you - you're in, you're
in, no, no, some other fellow's in, new worry rising like a wind
In the glass, a thinner picture of your face
In your dreams, a yuka moth, a shell, the sea
In the back room of a pub, a cheer, the pint glass clunks just hold it boy, just
In the makeshift ring, a shirtless man who looks like you, but something
in your pocket, something in your pocket
In the air, your bare fists flailing, his bare fists cracking on your ribs, your cheeks, your lip split
in two, a glug of blood, your blood, oh
in that gloomy room, a single bulb above the ring where you are sinking like a puppet
in his arms, in his arms
...