Armature
For the feet, I push against the scrim the fact
that we waited for each other in different bookshops.
With a knife I smooth the calves
with the thought of my Arran cardigan, newly washed,
folded over your battered brown briefcase
giving us the number 146 from the cloakroom.
At the knee is the confusion of the word lift with escalator.
The thighs I thumb with my fingers,
rub in the crazed brown paint
behind the furthest of Picasso’s Dancers
with the blue impasto you noticed on the window.
It was then I wanted to slip my hand inside the warmth of yours.
The hips have got to be that wailing installation
reminding you of your first marriage –
a tortured face trapped beneath a sofa.
The torso will be the viewing platform –
the sun hitting the gold pinnacle of St Paul’s,
the out of use Millennium Bridge you tried to use,
the wooden bollard bobbing in the water,
a quadrant of rainbow in a grey spotlit sky.
It was here I rediscovered your tallness,
my head inclined towards your shoulder.
The neck is a reference to a previous conversation.
The head will be the café.
‘You have the view,’ ‘No, you have the view, ‘Please, you have the view,’
two vases of broad banana leaves,
a serviette laid over your knees for drinking tea,
the fineness of your opaline skin,
your exquisite finger ends,
the landscape of your pillow mouth my fingers mean to trace.
On Being Shut Out of the Jardin des Poètes
The first snow that winter locked the gates,
closed in case of accidents on ice.
Through the fence, the mounds which hold
the plaques of verse faced away,
Hugo turned his monumental back.
Next door was officially closed,
but the gates were opened and I entered
the greenhouse garden – les Serres d’Auteuil.
An azalea held out purple next to bitten rhododendrons,
witch hazel wrote ochre in the snow,
a clipped box orb fell in with smooth grey stone.
A shrub, wrapped in a silver robe,
was tied at the waist, like a torso.
Chrissie Gittins was born near Manchester and lives in South London. She studied at Newcastle University and St Martin’s School of Art. Her poetry has been broadcast on the BBC and published widely in magazines, anthologies, newspapers, and in two pamphlet collections. Her first full collection – Armature – will be publishes by Arc Publications later this year. Chrissie has read at the Royal Festival Hall, Keats House Hampstead, the Edinburgh International Book Festival and the British Council Bangkok. She recently won the only national British competition for poets who write for children – The Belmont Poetry Competition. Her children’s collection Now You See Me, Now You … was publishes last year. In 2001 she was awarded an international fellowship at Hawthornden Castle in Scotland, and she has since received awards from the Society of Authors and the Royal Literary Fund. Chrissie also writes short stories and radio drama.
www.chrissiegittins.co.uk
