Three Poems by Susan Vickerman

Don’t Explain. A Eulogy

A life. Let’s call him Bob, this dash of light
on dull sand. This soft man sat
among right-angles, long tongues.
His nostril-muck soot-caked. A roll-up stuck
behind an ear. Was that the mumble
of a former child, now grizzled male
slobbed in his pipe-smoke reek? Smell this
pale pink withered hyacinth. Taste biscuit.
See his open door hemmed grey with rainsplash.
Trundle-noise – a blue bus rolling by.
Wee dram held in the fingerless glove
of a jumpered, lumpen man who has no side.
Hug him. He is your poem. Do not explain –
just hold a thought that’s empty. He is solid.
Make a cup of tea and listen for values.
Honesty. Justice. Simple truth. Bob’s anthem.
He is a page on the calendar, turned unseen,
yet mattering, this life layered onto muddy lands,
these tones of subdued male, this act of will,
these faded, ageing hands that speak
because he means something.

Arty Bridget

And unknowingly, onto the holy site,
amid the deposited silt, the alluvium
lining the banks of the River Nile’s delta
in bright patches as when seen from Space,
Bridget collaged a cut-out piece of the night,
before the massacre took place.

By morning her scratchy pigment depicting
Earth’s dry crust in today’s Middle East
is flame-lit – lands ablaze, firebombed.
Unleashed winds fling sand across her painting,
filling the bullet-holes, clogging the eyes
of the dead. Her colours are bleeding.

Glue. Scissors. Fancy paints and a press.
Drink tea. Make art. Watch a test match.

Tablecloth

It is new. The pattern of red jags beneath his
cornflakes bowl. Vermillion. Orange. Heat maps.
Coastal erosion, graphed. The chattering teeth
of another global fever. Tea-towel a white flag
as scarlet pyramids warn of an attack.

How to eat cereal when over the table
breakfast TV delivers border skirmishes
and global carbon-counts – the arid maths of
what his kind has done to the weather.

Was he too a man like that? He turns
the tap. Water, at least, a hard cold fact.
There’s comfort in the grit of the scouring pad
against the roasting tin, how burnt-on fat
submits beneath the pressure of his thumb.

It’s not a retreat, exactly – more waiting it out
while the world performs its slow, dramatic tilt.
The cupboard’s door-hinge needs a drop of oil,
a bit of minding; the 'L' of an Ikea hex-key
is stopping this drawer from shutting – a tool
for a simple world. Flat-packs. Clear cut.

It is good to be busy sorting socks,
to muse on steam puffing out of the iron –
tiny local clouds that will soon dissipate.
Milk on the tablecloth. John Lewis.
His leaky roof is still a roof. Stone floor
still solid beneath his slippers.



Sue Vickerman is a committed Yorkshirewoman, poet, novelist, playwright, translator, editor, life model, event curator and (very) occasional stand-up comedian. Five Arts Council (UK) awards over three decades have facilitated her publication of four works of fiction, two translations from German of literary works, and six volumes of poetry. Sue’s poems, translations, stories and articles have appeared in The Guardian, Times Educational Supplement, Oxford Poetry, The Poetry Review, Stand and The Rialto, and internationally in the Stockholm Review, Los Angeles Review, Trafika Europe, The Massachusetts Review, Shanghai Review etc. Translated works include Kathrin Schmidt’s short story collection 'It's over. Don't go there.' and a collection of Schmidt’s poems.