'Flash' writing anthology about chronic pain - submissions welcome!
An afternoon spent, or was it an evening, or three, in a wheel clamp’s tender clasp. My dues for modernist mutation paid out in full: ribs, calves, hands, sections of skull, wrenching, arching, hardening. A homecoming of sorts, a holding; mattress won’t grumble, neither will I – if only we knew if we’re hot or cold, horsehair or hardware, flesh or fish or foil.
U.K.
Wedged between sky and river
The birch, plaiting scarred spines, joins
Ochre leaves to Cirrus clouds.
In the wedge of bed and window
Your wounded limbs endure
A throbbing rhythm to misting dew
Autumn wraps a sultry cage
Of alizarin crimson.
She entwines the rising bone
To breach the slough of heaven
Branches thunder and crack
Under heavy snow
And escape still enclosed in
Huey blues Your mind warps
And wraps itself with morphine
Just a little twist, a sideways step to dodge out of the path of an eyes-forward businessman on a mission. My hip twists with the sideways step, then ankle and finally, knee. It’s a searing pain, stabs straight through the joint like a missile and there’s a battle taking place in there. My face is blank, a natural reaction to sudden, unbearable pain: a state of brief shock, no matter how many times it happens. No one would know, especially not the businessman with his dead eyes and umbrella wielded like a weapon. A friend notices my misstep and grabs my arm to speed up – the knee won’t buckle, never does, so I carry on with clenched teeth and hands and eyes. Good little soldier, that knee. We walk on, the debris of dead bone – dead men – in that ordinary-looking joint waging war silently beneath my skin.
United Kingdom
There is too much light
in the air today.
My eyelids won’t retreat;
they’re the heavy squad,
repelling all invaders.
My protection
from a day too heavy
for me,
for my chest,
my arms.
my legs.
I can only lie
down
beneath
its weight.
Breathing takes will.
Push, push the invisible hand
up,
feel it press back
down.
Repeat.
and repeat.
Repeat again.
Muscles rebel.
Fibres tug against their tense kin,
stiffening, a shudder of spasms.
Nerve endings return fire,
trajectory dipping from collarbone
toward elbow
past wrist
till fingertips vibrate
like
plucked
harp
strings.
breathe.
breathe.
The throb, I ache.
My feet go AWOL – no –
now they’re back with a burn.
Television assaults me,
sound and vision launch
breathe.
combined assaults,
attacking my senses.
My brain scrambles to keep up.
breathe.
In silence, the soft pillows embrace me.
I lean in.
Let them tend my wounds.
Scotland
(After Tennyson’s ‘The Dying Swan’)
In this wasting plain a
Wedge of swans
Tangle in water
So deep her eyes
In the gyring ferment
I am impotent
Warming blankets only burn
The stab
I cannot touch her
I cannot reach her
To this berth I cannot go
She writhes
White feathers
Drop around her bed
Swans wedge her in again
Swimming violently
Their bowing heads
Surface again
This churning of webbed feet
In water I cannot enter nor fathom
There is no present no past no future
Only some existence that is now and not now
She would wish to die
I would wish to die
Explicitly she does not wish to die
The room is swirling with the rotation of swans
Specters with no beauty
Shape-shifters leading to another world
No end no beginning
Still outside we hear
In thunder birds
A swirling of swallows
On Scarborough beach, I played football.
This image is one of my new paintings. It is autobiographical and consists of two halves. One half reflects my early life growing up in Neepsend, an industrial area of Sheffield. The other half depicts me, as a child, on the beach with my football.
U.K.
Eight months of pain, guilt.
Losing my movement slowly,
Affecting my work.Pain in my hip, back,
Encroaching on everything.
Physio: please help.Boss can’t understand,
Pretended it wasn’t bad.
I used to be fit.
Practicing patience,
Trying to be kind to self.
But some days that’s hard.
[This image shows my legs in better times, when they were still able to take me on a 15 kilometre hike through the Rocky Mountains. Summer, 2017.]
Canada
U. K.
Today I was issued with hand splints.
Carapaced; oddly reassuring, oddly restricting;
Even in their disposition.
I am that crab.
Their bindings have an onomatopoeia: irascible.
by Ruth Victoria Chalkley
Additional poems hosted on other websites: Tanzkarte NHS; Carrier Pigeon for Science
U.K.
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