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Kate Lilley

Eighteen poems (from Jacket magazine)

From Jacket 5:

Discovery

Precision-timed explosions create
acres of visual illusion.
I was hoping to reproduce the mood
      of a brawl on the Champs Elysée.

Weirder evidence surfaces,
formal and somewhat see-through.
I had no idea how complicated
      lingerie could be.

The other woman’s pubic hair
is the sentimental favourite.
Instead of making yourself a nuisance
      pass the finger food.

You don’t need an invitation to leave.
You don’t need a PhD.


Finally

quarto doesn’t last a weak crush lingers
      like a festival of moss
the clerk of all passports takes me round
for a drink at a popular nightspot

I hear the voice-over from the start of Dirty Dancing
playing in the lounge and feel sedate
sedated
      like one more krispy kreme would set me up for life

if it’s not one thing it’s another
      if it’s not your fault it’s irrelevant
either way keep it sober
and sweet like some perpetual valentine

I read your letter o’er again
      it says what it doesn’t say
for so long I’ve wanted you to be my pretty queen


In the Sun

request permission to shoot
the diamonds, the disasters
the scene is changing by the minute

patio dining is a joke
Paris clay is cruel
no replays for you, nothing

I’m going to leave you my coupons
shock, disgust, you know
the waxworks are pricey but worth it

what at first I thought was your home
was the garage and nothing special
just a place to relax, make out

the big house is strictly off-limits
but the daughter climbs out the window
and roams the grounds at night

though the opening drags I stay
awake enjoying the tidal
wave of boredom and later

fondling her elegant breasts
genre grinds to a halt
heedless of consequence



Lady-in-Waiting

a batch of defective miniatures
wet’n’dry shitloads of themed anthologies
the going rate for scribal publication

an imaginary critics’ circle
collates the known variants and picks up the tab
when hospitality goes wrong

the lodgings have no charm and no bar
the mistress of cheap rooms is punctual to a fault
topos of excessive suffering and detail

patron of the afternoon in a tailored costume
the conduct books have a word for it
sprezzatura of the feminine vernacular

from Jacket 9:

Quality Control

Formidable or freaked-out
make up your mind on the honeymoon

a turban creates a sense of occasion
over the holiday weekend

shop-soiled like a melamine tabletop
a sale beats breach of promise

the working bee will reconvene
for an impromptu quiz

I’ll supply the transcript
of a feud on the factory floor
 
 

As Is

Lonely stairway not so long ago
a raincoat’s floral lining

local girls trying seconds and samples
no exchange or refund

chiasmus of symptom and side effect
flooding chemical debris

strophe and antistrophe in the garment district


Georgic

The waterfall attracts its share of losers.
Nearby flowers recite past favourites unselfconsciously,
bowing their heads to the grass as the mercury falls.
Jocund and lowing abreact,
whistling charms the furrows.
The aesthetics of picnics gather parks
and trays embossed with birds and branches.
Lunch is served in the royal enclosure
by costumed swains and youths glad of the work.
Dishevelled planets grow up in arrears
and shed their light like imported brocade
used in the manufacture of evening bags.

From Jacket 10:

(say) when

even the blossoming tips of fruit trees
weep when they taste the exceptional flavour

that last aperitif was too much
I’ll throw up the late harvest and ruin the season

are those two sisters now or were they ever
why don’t you just shut up and run the test

when I bite through the striped seam of the gel cap
it is bitter to the nth degree


say so

the figures are up across the board
the columns look sorry and feverish

if I memorize your reasons
I’ll have to love them

in the meantime let me buy your initials
and afterwards change the locks

when the gauge is lit it’s busier
so make a fire and evaporate


Anamorphosis

For starters it’s vexatious
a meritocracy

you might look like her
she might look like me

undulating brunette fixation
melting depositary

backyard wreck and salvage
mount of piety


Starry Messenger

Mouthfuls of shame like an understudy
subigatrix voyage

my melody
my novelette
my secret solar system

courier of lightning’s borrowed oeuvre
strolling fricatrice

Starry Messenger [Sidereus nuncius, Venice, 1610] is the title of a treatise by Galileo announcing the telescopic discovery of the satellites of Jupiter. Check out the virtual tour of Galileo’s room: http://www.imss.fi.it/vr/eavv.html

(obs) subigate, v. Obs. [irreg. f. L. subigére (f. sub- sub- 26 + agére to bring) + -ate3.] trans. To knead or work up. ¶ 1657 Tomlinson Renou’s Disp. 172 Stir them together . . that the whole masse may be subigated.

fricatrice [ad. L. *frictrc-em, fem. agent-n. f. fricre to rub.] A lewd woman. ¶ 1605 B. Jonson, Volpone, iv. ii, [A patron] To a lewd harlot, a base fricatrice. ¶ 1708 Motteux Rabelais v. v. 165 Ingles, Fricatrices, He-Whores. ¶ 1871 R. Ellis Catullus xcix. 10 Like slaver abhorr’d breath’d from a foul fricatrice.

[O.E.D. online. Neither entry glosses the lesbian implications of ‘rubbing’ and ‘kneading’, but certainly these were words used in the early modern period to connote improper, sodomitical (i.e. nonprocreative) contact between women.

from Jacket 14:

Spruce

As it says in the job description

Strew my clothes on the road leave me uninhabited

If you want my scribble and craving

Cancel my vendetta vanilla me

Dawdling chenille aphrodisiac

Bed as couch ok a valediction

Nymphomania’s waning

You’ll retire and buy a knighthood

From Jacket 16:

Lady in the Dark

Feudal conflict in a turn-of-the-century prep school leads to complications
for young lesbians and their guardians; an estate in litigation and a botched
paternity suit. When a daughter marries her mother’s lover the air
fills with hieroglyphs, some you can see, others you can’t
unless you’re part of a certain clique of emotionally damaged outsiders.
Lucky for me I am and I love the Spanish interiors. What’s next?
A musical about psychoanalysis starring Ginger Rogers in a tux and bow tie.
She’s an editor who just can’t decide (should next month’s cover
have a circus theme? No, of course not!). Instead of doing her job
she’s dreaming up crazy dance routines in her dead mother’s dresses.
It sounds a lot more enjoyable than it actually is but the couch is wild.
I pass the time fantasising about making-over my office
and thinking about the conventions of the Elizabethan stage.
In the case of the boy-heroine the umbrella of fiction was meant to fail.
Apparently Ginger needs a new lay-out and all the help she can get
from a truckload of smoke and mirrors, the spring line of Paris originals,
a deputy who won’t roll over (Ray Milland) and a course of supervised
regression. Is that all? Cured after three sessions... Please! Call that work?
And where was the money changing hands? My mother loved Kitty Foyle
but she doesn’t cut it as a mannish woman — or an analysand.
If the analyst had been more alluring — butch or femme or butch-femme,
a provocatively brainy woman of any kind, the whole thing juicier
and dubbed into Spanish, more alert to the complex nuances of the
therapeutic relation... well, I would say that, wouldn’t I?


It follows

Resentment starts to go backwards in search of a new hermeneutic
the appointment slipped your mind that’s no excuse

I’m the kind who’ll sit in the waiting room and watch the second hand
for as long as it takes it’s something I’m proud of I won’t

leave just because it’s dark outside and the street is slick with tears
it’s impolite to tell you what you know already

and antisocial not to — I’ll bounce back in a year or two
sorry there’s no one on your side you’ll have to take mine

no need to write that down I’ll feel like a brute and it’ll only fester
then we’ll both be on our knees mewling and puking

it’s the voice of a thousand gardens making me cranky and out of sorts
quit your dimwit hankering and hollering I don’t want to hear it


Sequel

Author v title in the sunken lounge
‘abortion’ in the index
whose life am I living?
the blister platform is empty and so am I
rippled veneer
feast and famine
a bracelet of lost charms
the blonde gleam of moonlight like a slide projector

When it comes to period pieces keep it simple
genres get distressed
and then everybody’s anxious

From Jacket 27:

Cento / Around Vienna

A girl may harden herself
in the conviction that she does possess a penis
I had the usual feeling of anxiety that one has
in the somewhat haphazard order in which it recurs
I saw myself particularly distinctly
‘Why did I say nothing about the scene by the lake
for some days after it had happened?
Why did I then suddenly tell my parents about it?’
A normal girl, I am inclined to think,
will deal with a situation of this kind by herself
I will begin by mentioning the subject-matter
he intended to come forward as a suitor one day
what was the source of the words ‘if you like’?
there was a question mark after this word, thus ‘like?’.

She might calmly read whatever she chose
‘vorhof’ [‘vestibulum’; literally ‘fore-court’] —
an anatomical term for a particular
region of the female genitals
She had left home and gone among strangers
to this came the addendum not the least sadly
her father’s heart had broken with grief and longing
he could not get to sleep without a drink of brandy
sexual satisfaction is the best soporific
She then recognized these words as a quotation
her knowing all about such things and at the same time
pretending not to know was really too remarkable
the feelings of pity for him which she remembered
from the day before would be quite in keeping with this

In repeating the dream she said ‘two hours’
so here we were back again at the scene by the lake
no sooner had she grasped the purport of his words
than she had slapped him in the face and hurried away
‘you know I get nothing out of my wife’
Her father was dead and she had left home by her own choice
this fact determines the psychical coating
In the background of the picture there were nymphs
the neurosis had seized upon this chance event
and made use of it for an utterance of its own
They are therefore questions referring to — the genitals
wandering about in a strange town was overdetermined
my expectations were by no means disappointed
You give me a fortnight’s warning just like a governess


Miltonic

Press hash and state your business somewhat loudly
while organic intermediates clear a path

what turns up’s somewhat lucid ceaseless
an expurgated text unfit for work

mourning’s hard to metabolise
the party’s themeless don’t even come

sweep the strings and hold for pastures new
woeful shepherdess

(metaphor) (condensation)
acid mantle blue


My Bad

In the doghouse my date barks back
bite-size annihilation

Behind the door the facts
the jokes of one awaiting trial

Am I under-administration
or beginning to free associate?

Enter the poltergeist girls
with the hands of stenographers

Burning glances at smoko
moaning after lights out

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