Five Poems by Susan Wilson

 

Chain Gang

On this narrow path I am bound for

redemption. I am one yet one of many.

We are so close, almost skin-stitched

in our matching patterns, shuffling footprints

into a history for those who follow.

We are here to work and learn our lesson,

sharing our daily bread on gritty lips –

it tastes like a punishment.

I don’t know how I got here and

this trail of links only leads me back

to here again.

I will do my time, in my own time –

it’s life, but a lifetime can only stretch

so far, like the span of a hand.

I’m hand in hand with others

and their loss is my solitary confinement,

behind the cold door, a silent me,

whoever that is. The time left on my

hands will be decided by the One

who put me here in the first place

so I know my release could come

at any time.

 

Lamentable

 

Middle aged blood rippling

 

varicose veins behind a

 

locked door

 

breath held but pulse beating

 

bristling like the broom in

 

his hand

 

his button pressed to my

 

floor should have used the

 

staircase

 

to dance with Tuxedo Don

 

trailing Valentines sent

 

too late

 

 

 

then the bus stopped

 

in the middle of the road

 

for me

 

 

 

 

	eyes snared in adjusted mirrors
for a girl at every bus stop
and I was
that girl running across the
green from his voice his legs
his camera
	my door my stairs my bell
my window his upward face
just smile
just smile
just smile

 

Saturday Girl

Saturday comes uniformed in pink and blue

pressing buttons on a till. Like learning to drive.

A sale for Sally and me. His wife’s 5 pence

deducts from the price, but he says we’re swindling.

Joan is our supervisor and Sally is her niece

and our friendship is good shop floor politics.

In the stock room, I’m toppling big boxes

with a broom head. The maintenance man says I look

too intelligent to be working here –

a complimentary insult I cannot share.

That broom head sweeps the day clean at 5.25

and I do it every week. No arguments Susan!

Saturday brings Chanel No.5 from Joan’s house

to be sold on, without a receipt. The next week

it’s leaking back again with the customer.

How do you empty the refund out of that, Joan?

Staff urgency, to develop the camera film.

Staff discount, to buy the make-up. It’s a phase.

I’m going to a party so don’t touch my nails!

A fortnight’s growth for one night’s silver varnish.

Staff privilege, an early gift set from the stock room,

some L’Aimant perfume for my mum – all pink and sweet.

I work a Christmas week, four weeks in the summer

but always demoted from the till to fill the shelves.

Saturday leaves me, at £9 per day, the highest paid,

with a lesson in how to deal with people,

which only gets harder on a five-day office week.

 

They Didn’t Close the Bus Stop

The road is closed again.

This morning they drilled a hole between last week

and this week, to dig out each day, every day.

An announcing estimate works into a bigger bill

and we will always have to pay it.

Red traffic signs file towards the forbidden junction.

The darkness will grow them into old men,

heaving sacks damp with muddy inconvenience.

An uneasy covering of tarpaulin has replaced

our solid roof of routine and the rain,

with its moody friends, the clouds,

frowns on a tiny hole open to the sky.

Its squinting eye returns a gaze into the place

where our normal days have flown.

Our neighbourly birds are struck dumb in the trees,

waiting around after their eviction by the workmen

and the domineering thunder of their trade.

A hard hat hut is a windowed closet of sanctuary

where they sit in a laughter of foreign accents.

The kettle puffs a smoky grin at the milk carton,

it’s half empty and its crusty lid doesn’t care.

I navigate past the hut on an unfamiliar path.

Beside the bus stop, workmen and machinery

move within a dancing landscape.

Last time they closed the road I had watched

and pleaded, electronically, from a distance.

Today I discover I had a voice after all.

They didn’t close the bus stop this time.

Old Rain in the City

Inspired by “Old Rain” a track from PFM’s 1973 album
“Photos of Ghosts”

Old rain is crying against the window

of an empty office, sixteen floors up

and through this window above the City

the early stars are like daylight

pinpricking against the evening sky,

in case the sky should forget.

Unlike the sky, we never forget,

yet like the sky, we must leave each day

to layer itself upon the next,

sealing in the moments and their feelings

pressed as yearnings onto the heart,

as the hastening future reminds the present

to mourn its lengthening past.

On my walk through Finsbury Circus

and to the train station beyond,

the road markings and sign posts

are constant companions, until the days

layered into years force their grip

from the tarmac, wet from old rain’s tears.

I’m looking back,

weaving a window with water and wailing

trying to wind back the past but failing

crying with old rain now those buildings are gone

crying with old rain now those people are gone

crying is deeper when old moments are gone.

The sound of the past has died.

Susan Wilson lives in East London and began writing poetry following the death of her mother in 2017. Her poems have been published by Lucy Writers, Snakeskin, Runcible Spoon, Dreich, Areopagus, Streetcake, Rue Scribe and Amethyst Review. Prior to the pandemic she was a regular performer at “Spineless Authors”, a local open mic event. Her debut chapbook is “I Couldn’t Write to Save Her Life” (Dreich, 2021).