Angela Andrews 2006 - TURBINE

ANGELA ANDREWS

After the test
I misplace you.

You are not
in the shoulder bag,

not in the raincoat.
A cardigan arrives

in the post –
soft Alpaca, bouclé,

light brown with
a crochet edge.

I walk around the house
feeling like someone else.

Then I find your image
amongst the receipts.

A book of poems,
soup on special,

bamboo blinds,
an embryo.

These fists and elbows
are dodging your grip,
won’t be described.

He gives you a murmur,
a Chinese whisper
coming up to your palms.

You’re in the dark
with nothing to point to,
nothing to know

but the rumoured
shift of new cells,
the fluid thrill.

He’s settling and resettling
like the cat who circles
and collapses again.

You feel the hollowing,
agitating and loosening,
the flurry of housekeeping

under the Medusa vein spread
of your skin. See the wild
proliferation of your blood there,

coursing over the surface,
inflating his veins
with an ultra-filtrate of you.

He moves now and you know
not to be fooled
by the lapping sensation –

he’s descending
down hard in the pelvis
head-first, knocking

bone against bone, like clicks
and scatters, or dice in a jar,
locking like a lattice of antlers.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Angela Andrews lives in Wellington with her young family. Her first book of poems will be published by Victoria University Press in 2007.