Poem
Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch
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The day of your post mortemI cleaned the kitchen
to blot out the hour you’d be cut up,
made apple pie, scrubbed the table
again, wondering how
you were getting on. If you were here
you’d be sat there with your pinking shears
thinking in appliqué, stencilling
quilted queens: Branwen, Marie-Antoinette,
long-necked with their net coronets,
sewn into chiffon gowns, sequins pinned into their eyes,
silk lips slit into diamonds, their cheekbones
slashed indigo lines.
I reconstruct your mosaic face
in my head as I wash up, I,
restricted by nine stitches in my back,
itself a collage of red lines and thread,
my deckle-edged tumour out of the picture now.
We were trying to piece you together,
your new tenant explains on the phone,
what you leave behind tells a story, doesn’t it?
© 2008, Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch
From: Not In These Shoes
Publisher: Picador, London
From: Not In These Shoes
Publisher: Picador, London
Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch
(United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 1966)
Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch grew up in New Quay, Ceredigion. After reading Classics at Cambridge University, she took an MA in Creative Writing at Cardiff University. She lived in Oxford, Paris and the Isles of Scilly before returning to New Quay. Her work has been shortlisted for the Michael Marks Award (2014), the Roland Mathias Prize (2013) and Wales Book of the Year (2009). Samantha has taught...
Poems
Poems of Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch
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The day of your post mortemI cleaned the kitchen
to blot out the hour you’d be cut up,
made apple pie, scrubbed the table
again, wondering how
you were getting on. If you were here
you’d be sat there with your pinking shears
thinking in appliqué, stencilling
quilted queens: Branwen, Marie-Antoinette,
long-necked with their net coronets,
sewn into chiffon gowns, sequins pinned into their eyes,
silk lips slit into diamonds, their cheekbones
slashed indigo lines.
I reconstruct your mosaic face
in my head as I wash up, I,
restricted by nine stitches in my back,
itself a collage of red lines and thread,
my deckle-edged tumour out of the picture now.
We were trying to piece you together,
your new tenant explains on the phone,
what you leave behind tells a story, doesn’t it?
From: Not In These Shoes
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