Tamar Yoseloff
Disappointment
sticks, a sour kiss. The gold statuette is tin
beneath her nicks.
My stand is to sit
as ice breaks in my glass.
Hours pass
when Nothing is King. This is the life
I assembled from the kit – not like the picture
on the box.
Words are black blocks: we say
‘orange’ or ‘train’ but their things slip away, flat
on the tongue.
My stand is to stand
as the house falls around me:
cardboard and spit, holes for windows.
Dust settles.
I fit the empty frame.
In clover
if any man walking in the fields find any foure-leaved grasse, he shall in a small while after find some good thing
– Sir John Melton
She has enough to fill a case the length of the hall.
Years of tuning her eye to difference, inhabiting
the caterpillar’s miniature domain. Always a strange girl.
One leaf is sunshine, the second is rain.
When Eve was banished from Eden, she snatched one,
a souvenir of Paradise. Or so they say. No doubt she left
with nothing, but we like the idea of a small green hope.
Browned petals like the skin of old ladies.
They say the bearer can spy fairies, banish evil spirits;
four is the number of the Cross. We stash away our charms,
remembering the rabbit’s foot wasn’t lucky for the rabbit.
Crushed to dust in time.
She started when she was seven. An auspicious number.
The casual hunt grew to obsession as she got older.
And now she can’t face the world before her, only
the ground we will all go to.
sticks, a sour kiss. The gold statuette is tin
beneath her nicks.
My stand is to sit
as ice breaks in my glass.
Hours pass
when Nothing is King. This is the life
I assembled from the kit – not like the picture
on the box.
Words are black blocks: we say
‘orange’ or ‘train’ but their things slip away, flat
on the tongue.
My stand is to stand
as the house falls around me:
cardboard and spit, holes for windows.
Dust settles.
I fit the empty frame.
In clover
if any man walking in the fields find any foure-leaved grasse, he shall in a small while after find some good thing
– Sir John Melton
She has enough to fill a case the length of the hall.
Years of tuning her eye to difference, inhabiting
the caterpillar’s miniature domain. Always a strange girl.
One leaf is sunshine, the second is rain.
When Eve was banished from Eden, she snatched one,
a souvenir of Paradise. Or so they say. No doubt she left
with nothing, but we like the idea of a small green hope.
Browned petals like the skin of old ladies.
They say the bearer can spy fairies, banish evil spirits;
four is the number of the Cross. We stash away our charms,
remembering the rabbit’s foot wasn’t lucky for the rabbit.
Crushed to dust in time.
She started when she was seven. An auspicious number.
The casual hunt grew to obsession as she got older.
And now she can’t face the world before her, only
the ground we will all go to.
© Copyright Tamar Yoseloff 2019
Tamar Yoseloff’s sixth collection, The Black Place, is published by Seren in October 2019. She’s also the author of Formerly (with photographs by Vici MacDonald), shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award; two collaborative editions with artist Linda Karshan; and a book with artist Charlotte Harker. She runs poetry courses for galleries including the Hayward, the RA and the National Gallery and is a lecturer on the Poetry School / Newcastle University MA in Writing Poetry.