There is something of rain to you I could say
to my brother if anger was bite size and not
a baton to be wielded to a plum.
I want you to want an available peace,
an acquittal of ire, a way out of fiery
words, a little less of seizure with tongue,
the way you bang out the bass of each
sentence in staccato, fresh vowels and
a kind of relentless precipitation: Is there
a razor stuck behind your teeth? Is there
anything you won’t do to hide the twelve
year old boy left behind? You beat him
up, you put me down, oh clever clever
things are in your words. There is so
little in the way of sun through the window
of your car, which each day, feels the force
of your foot on the clutch, the hot grip on
the wheel, the rain which rubber wipers
hopelessly smear in an arc the shape
of a rainbow, the shape a mouth makes
in the emoticon for sad.
(previously unpublished)
Andrea Holland works part time as a lecturer in creative writing at UEA. Her collections are Borrowed (Smith/Doorstop, 2007) and Broadcasting (Gatehouse Press, 2013) which won the Norfolk Commission for Poetry. She has collaborated with visual artists and is currently learning to ride a motorbike.
andotherpoems.com 