ANGELA ANDREWS
Magic Cup
You’re there below
my kitchen window,
stretched out
beneath the washing.
You tell yourself
this is study,
with your plastic-bound
booklet and fluorescent
pen, the text facing
the ground, weighing
down today on page
three-nine-three.
All lipgloss, sunglass,
moisturiser: your
iridescence is brilliant
in the changing light.
So as I’m rinsing suds
off the rubber piece
of the breast pump
that cones over the breast,
I wonder if you
could assemble it
in ten seconds
as if it were a gun –
you, semi-naked,
heady with sun,
brainy and young.
And as you
are coming to grips with
the shifts of salts
in the kidney,
and how the body
just knows
to activate thirst,
I’m filling this cup
that won’t spill
or slosh
no matter how
it is shaken or tossed,
thinking how rightly
they have called it magic.
my kitchen window,
stretched out
beneath the washing.
You tell yourself
this is study,
with your plastic-bound
booklet and fluorescent
pen, the text facing
the ground, weighing
down today on page
three-nine-three.
All lipgloss, sunglass,
moisturiser: your
iridescence is brilliant
in the changing light.
So as I’m rinsing suds
off the rubber piece
of the breast pump
that cones over the breast,
I wonder if you
could assemble it
in ten seconds
as if it were a gun –
you, semi-naked,
heady with sun,
brainy and young.
And as you
are coming to grips with
the shifts of salts
in the kidney,
and how the body
just knows
to activate thirst,
I’m filling this cup
that won’t spill
or slosh
no matter how
it is shaken or tossed,
thinking how rightly
they have called it magic.
Ice-skating
Avondale/Holland
We collect at the periphery:
uncertain bathers at the edge
uncertain bathers at the edge
of a great white pool. But when
the sound is given, you lead
the sound is given, you lead
the push, your strong wax strokes
slipping through ice,
slipping through ice,
long and looping, making the first
scrawled marks in the afternoon.
scrawled marks in the afternoon.
I recall your stories, the photo,
a long tract of ice
a long tract of ice
as far as the eye can see,
incising the horizon,
incising the horizon,
swept clean and smooth
in a well-groomed stripe.
in a well-groomed stripe.
*
It’s what they call
a diamond day –
a diamond day –
the white stretch fastened
with clear, cold air, nothing
with clear, cold air, nothing
between but you,
the slipstream swoop of skaters,
the slipstream swoop of skaters,
children on double blades
clutching chairs. You start:
clutching chairs. You start:
sawtooth metal stuck in ice,
the push. You swing your arms,
the push. You swing your arms,
gather yourself, thighs
thrusting forward against the hard
thrusting forward against the hard
canal and you’re there, in flight.
Top half forward, chin tucked in,
Top half forward, chin tucked in,
hands linked there
in the small of your back.
in the small of your back.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Angela Andrews has been working on a collection of poems this year for the MA in Creative Writing at Victoria University. She was previously working as a junior doctor.