Charlotte Wetton

 

Mexico

 

In Mexico, everything will be different.

We will have a house on the edge of the desert,

a yard of hot dust, a rangey dog on a chain;

lizards will climb in the walls and one eagle

will turn and slowly turn in the blue expanse.

We will eat ’till we are full

and the meat juice runs down our chins;

I’ll put on a little weight

from fat-fried beans and corn

and it’ll suit me, my hips tilt a little wider.

In Mexico, I will pour milk from a blue jug,

pin flowers in my hair.

The heat will harden me.

I’ll wear boots with spurs, an icon of the Virgin,

ride pillion on your motorbike,

gamble with dice, smoke

and spit with a hoarse and grainy vigour.

I will smell that note of your sweat,

you will eye the shadows of my blouse, our eyes meet

and we will make love on the stone flags,

on the dirt of the yard, until dusk falls

and we lie with the salt stiffening

on cooling skin above hot blood

and the cicadas sing and sing until death.

 

 

 

Foundation Garments

 

Women’s bodies

poured warm into stockings, bustiers:

shimmy wriggle in, tug pull tuck in

 

snap clasp, slick schucked;

now they are vitrifed, shinyed,

 

basted all over under their clothes,

squeezed and smoothed solid,

 

they are ready.

 

 

 

The Furniture Game With Sylvia Plath

 

You’re late night champagne, the extra glass we shouldn’t have,

brittle stemmed; we all know you’re breakable.

 

You’re a lunar landscape of red and purple hills

where painters set up easels

 

and the crowds come with penny-tickets

to see the dead woman breathe.