Four Poems by John Whitehouse

 

Holidaying with Dad during his Divorce

 

His car is a nervous breakdown, scattering chrome

upon the motorway. In the rain, he gasps through

panic attacks in medieval towers. The falconry display

 

goes on regardless, and eejits in velour, have a crack

at each other with plywood lances. I’m in a fugue state,

headphones glued, as mum calls to accuse him of kidnapping.

 

Come for a drink, he says. Retreat to the Travelodge,

dry my one pair of flares in the mysterious trouser press.

He presses into my hands some Günter Grass, and Sylvia Plath-

 

time-capsule messages in a language we don’t share.

He’s stopped crying now thank God. The evening heaves

with the bellows of cows taken from their calves. 

 

 

Typewriters

 

Black Olivetti typewriters drum to a deadline,

sounding like rain,

 

Bakelite phones set to ring, welcoming 

the bloodthirsty day.

 

At his father’s house, the interview simmered

like a boiling sea. 

 

having said goodbye to the real life, Jesus,

and the Word made flesh.

 

He substituted Pitman’s Shorthand, to shore-up

the fruitless language,

 

flying out in a sports car, down country lanes 

to news-in-the-making,

 

films to review in darkened cinemas. A brew

of ravishment and shame. 

 

 

A lover’s song

 

The house was silent, except

for her breathing. He ached

to be her lover. Money caked

on his hands, like bread dough. 

 

The unruffled lake settled

where sky and waters meet.

Midges dancing in mid-air,

a beatitude to their delirium.   

 

He read the news for omens,

hung a sign over his door:

Do not disturb. A third sex

yearning for a lover’s song,

 

modern metaphors of sexology?

He looked at the stillness

of his wife breathing in and out,

he put the yearning inside himself.

 

Cigarette smoke drifted across

the room. He squinted through

the fog, to patterns of rain bathing

the pane, insignias of their marriage. 

 

 

Uncle Jim

 

My father was Vladimer, Uncle Jim was Estragon,

a pair of autodidacts. Estragon’s horse, foraging

in the Hawthorn, tilting the wagon across the path.

 

His gait was unsteady, as if he was on board a ship,

handing disgusting sherbets, drawn from the soiled

gusset of his trousers, like a skirt around his loins.

 

Vladimir worked on his contraptions, a biscuit tin,

bits of string and glue to make mandolins. A dying

fall of Lets do it Again, lilting around the garden

 

Estragon was a rag and bone man. He wears a white

silk scarf and carried me to school. A prince of tin baths,

the echo of mandolins, while he clucked the horse.

John Whitehouse is a retired academic, living in London. He suffers from aphasia after a major stroke, which affects him with comprehension. His work has been in: Interpreters’ House, Acumen, Frogmore Papers, Stand, French Literary Review, Cannons Mouth, London Grip, and various Poetry anthologies, including Coal, commemorating the Miner’s Strike. His poetry was commended twice in the Bridport Prize, and short listed for the Templar Prize. John received an Arts Council Grant which led to a first collection of Poetry, A Distant Englishness published by Clayhanger Press in 2024. The second collection After a Short Illness is to be published by Broken Sleep in 2026.