Christian Ward

Cinq Poesies

 

Reading the Mystery Novel 

 

Forget the pool boy with the congressman's wife. 

Forget the professor with the lead pipe, the maid

with the arsenic, the estranged son with a gun. 

Ignore the drifter with the smile sharp as a white 

picket fence, neighbours sweet as marzipan. 

Stare at the body being dismantled by beetles, 

exposing the skeleton untouched by guilt or greed. 

Gather the clues. Figure out the motive. Assemble

the suspects in the front room. Point the finger

at yourself. Remember the skull, how it used

to be someone like yourself, lost in the endless 

rooms of grief and love, playing the same game 

over and over again. 

 

(Previously published in The Battered Suitcase in 2009)

 

Spock

 

He's the ideal flatmate: clean, tidy,

never drinks or smokes. Doesn't get music

but that's okay. I've learnt to stop staring

at his ears in case he grips my neck

and I collapse like laundry on the floor.

Some days, late at night, I hear him muttering

'Captain, Captain, Captain' into a shoe

and laugh to myself. Spock, fine as he may be,

doesn't make for the best company. Everything

 has to be logical: call centres, mangoes, even sex. 

My girlfriend says he's a pervert whenever she’s around,

 that he leers at her in a strange way, as if something

 is trapped under his skin and he's desperately trying

 to get rid of it. Weirdo. And, if you're wondering, 

never talk to him about poetry. He bloody hates it. 

You can almost smell the dactyls bubbling on his tongue

 as he drones on, how illogical it is to describe emotion 

on paper, before becoming still like a heron about to dive

 into the dark of a pond it has never seen before.

 

(Previously published in Bedford Square 5, 2011) 

 

Filming The Beheading of Daniel Pearl

 

Week twelve. The special effects

guy has quit, citing ‘insensitive

subject matter’. Asshole. $300k

down. Maryland is no Pakistan

 

but between the minaret-necked

cormorants and hillbilly locals

I can’t tell the difference. Week

eighteen. The walk-on playing

 

Pearl’s Taliban executioner can’t

hold the replica scimitar steady,

doesn’t believe it won’t cut. I press

the edge against my right arm, point

 

to the dent, shallow as a GI’s crew-cut,

that it leaves. $500k down. The man

is still shaking. Dick. Week twenty-four.

Some pathetic loser has left a fake head

 

drooling ketchup outside my trailer. $2m

down. My head is already loosening itself

from the neck. I don’t need a gimmick

to tell me this is the worst death I’ve experienced yet.

 

(Previously published in Fuselit, 2010) 

 

Drive In
 
John Wayne taps you on the shoulder
but he’s nowhere to be seen in the wing mirror.
 
Your quiff is frozen mid-crest and the Thunderbird’s
vinyl is sticky with fear. Peggy Sue leans over
and says ‘kiss me baby, let’s be quick’
but all you can think of is the Swamp Man lurching 
into view.
 
Light dances a bolero on its way from the projectionist’s 
booth and hydrogen ignites. Helium and oxygen 
conjoin under a discoball and everyone heads to funky town.
 
Another universe explodes on your tongue
with the last sip of Coca Cola but all that’s on your mind
are her arms around you, everything coming into view:
the kiss, smoke in search of its gun, the uncertain morning after.

 

(Previously published in Poetry Scotland, 2010)

 

Observing the Wolf Man

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The wolf man sitting opposite

on the train is thumbing through

a cheap paperback. His hairy

hands, thickened by moonlight,

carefully turn the tea-brown pages,

examining each description 

and snippet of dialogue until they 

are fully absorbed into his system

like water drunk from a wolf’s paw print. 

I'd take a careful look at his face 

to see his sulphur eyes, how much closer 

he resembles the wolf than the dog, 

but am afraid he might chow down 

on my belly like in a B movie horror.

Isn't that the way we'd all like to go —

in full view of the camera, lights blaring,

the shadowed director stretching the length

of the moment until he shouts "Cut!"

and everything fades to white?

 

(Previously published in Prole, 2012) 

 

Christian Ward is a UK based writer who can be currently found in Culture Matters, Spillword, Poetry and Places and, now, DM. Bienvenue au Danse, Christian.

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