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Burning Her Hair
She dreams he
is burning her –
flames held to
the sheets
till they blacken
into holes; her hair,
licked with red,
the pillow littered
with scorched
curls.
What’s odd
is that she’s calm,
even when he holds
a match to her eyes.
He peers into
the blue,
she gazes back.
When the matches
run out,
he rubs two sticks
together.
Ah yes, he says, the Wolf Cubs,
that was where I learned it:
those camps where Akela’s lips
were extra greasy, where he showed us
how to make dabs from flour and water,
cook them in a ring of fiery stones.
He gave us butter to rub on our burns.
in the yellow
and black pyjamas she abhors.
He presses closer
but she doesn’t want to turn to him.
Disgruntled he
gets out of bed, goes to work early
with extra gel
on his hair. There’s a dollop of it
left in the basin
– sticky, sweet-smelling, golden-hued
but not at all
like honey.
Ghost
The ghost of his
father
followed him everywhere
–
on the sea, making
holes in the waves
with his skinny
feet; on land,
flitting between
trees, a tall shadow.
He would come
in dreams
with huge teeth
like a horse
or approach ominously
at dawn
demanding to be
fed.
The boy joined
the army
to learn courage
but because
he was afraid
of his own breath
they threw him
out.
He took up kite-flying
but his father
still stalked him,
hiding behind
clouds or knotting them
round his neck
to obscure his face.
To his son, he
was always recognisable –
same stoop, same
black aureole of hair.
In the end the
boy gave up running,
lay down on the
desert floor
among the singing
frogs.
Seasons came and
went,
he lived on air,
his tormentor
standing beside
him day and night,
balanced on one
leg, like a crane,
snapping up any
food that came their way,
swallowing it
down in one.
As the boy dwindled
into the earth
he never stopped
wondering
why his father
kept so hungry,
why he wouldn’t
stay buried in water
among the golden
shiny-looking fish.
Copyright
© Jennifer Copley, 2008
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