Our POETS IN PERSON anthology launch and reading event in London, on May 30th is drawing near, so I will introduce the participating poets (in alphabetic order) by posting one poem each day for twenty days. Here is the fifth poem by Martina Evans: Kept Back Prayer, the last refuge of the scoundrel Lisa Simpson Even Bart Simpson felt the shame, yellow and unreal as he was and everything distracted him but especially the snowstorm that God sent – he slumped slogging over a book while everyone in Springfield linked arms in a circle, singing A Winter Wonderland. But I was good at reading. I’d gone through the library and back, it was all inside me, how the Japanese houses were made of paper in case of Earthquake and Eskimos lived in igloos made of bricks of solid ice and the length of a boa constrictor was as long as six boys with American crew cuts, wearing turned-up jeans on six bicycles. The prayers were only an afterthought - didn’t we say them every day until we were sick of them? The colours of the Ladybird fairy tales scorched on my brain, Cinderella’s three dresses, blue and pink and gold and roses and the Elves and the Shoemaker, blue and green and pink with gold boots and the Ugly Duckling. I didn’t hear that it was my mother’s decision until years later when someone said Mrs McCarthy didn’t speak to her for a week. My mother who revered teachers, crossing words over this one? She, who told them not to spare the rod? All I knew then was what I heard, the others stumbling over their Acts of Faith, Hope and Charity, I was so sure that I knew the Acts only the teacher’s finger pointed straight. No First Holy Communion for me. I would never be sure again. Even Bart managed to woo Miss Krabappel into giving him a D minus in the end and he passed into fifth grade. But I was kept back and that was a Godless yellow feeling, repeating outside the ring of First Holy Communion dresses that went round and round, white and crisp as a Winter Wonderland.
Posted on: Mon, 12 May 2014 16:35:19 +0000