Helen Dennis: Two Poems

Helen Dennis

Helen May Dennis is Associate Professor at the University of Warwick. In addition to publishing academic articles and monographs — New Approach to the Poetry of Ezra Pound: through the Medieval Provencal Aspect (1996) and Native American Literature: Towards a Spatialized Reading (2006) — she is currently editing her mother’s memoirs. She has written poetry and plays since childhood. Her poetry has been published in small press publications, most recently Bluebeard’s Wives, 2007.

It is my fourth summer

Grandma is here to stay again,
doing the annual rounds
of her four sons and their families,
while her bedroom is used
for Guest House guests.

I wake each day with anticipation;
another companion besides Jeannie
and the steam engine drivers
who slow down for the level-crossing
wave and toot at terrier and tot
as I swing on the front gate.

Early morning smells of fresh damp grass
and Grandma’s lavender water.
I creep through her bedroom door
to watch the matinal ritual:
her soft seventy-year olds’ flesh
is squeezed and tucked into the ‘skin-toned’
crab-pink corset.

Whalebones, hooks and eyes,
pink satin ribbons. Around the ribs
a rigid shellacked shape, then wired cups
to prop her scrumpled bosoms. I am fascinated.
I cannot comprehend how she can
contort herself into such a tough carapace
and still look as if she is all stomach from breasts
to thighs. Maybe it’s the tea she drinks all day.

As Grandma breathes in and holds …
I too hold my breath
willing the miracle of undergarments
to occur all over again.
But this morning, Grandma
doesn’t greet me with a benevolent smile.
Instead she turns her head as she
struggles to step into the incarnate structure
and tells me to: Go Away, impertinent
curious child!

Flotsam and Jetsam

Two mischievous kittens lucky to be twins,
urging each other to further calamity.
At four my teddy was my sole partner in sin.

Pushchair memories float free.
Others are thrown over the gunwale
to save the drowning vessel, and cast ashore.

Romance is the tireless endeavour
to retrieve lost detritus, to net the pearl
plummeted in obscure oceanic depth.

That Easter the tide was so high
they closed the beach to cars.
That was before my father died.

I walked the high-tide line
found a museum of salt-licked objets,
a jetsam display of tortured plastic and tin.