– 68 –

Pile Diary

Day One
There's disorder down there.
Tenacious muscles
pleat and pucker and pop.
Axiomatic too
that if I want to adjust
there's an Arab in the car park.
I go for Doctor Unguent
and ride home in a cab
with forty dollars' worth of Xylocaine.
The sky's a dish of creamy lime delight
forecasting needles, blades…

Day Three
‘What can you tell me
about X?’ she asks.

It's Sunday. I'm in pain.
I have to sit in a certain position.
‘He was once in the navy,’ I say.

‘He uses little words.
He asked me to suck him off.
I'd like him to fuck me
without a condom,’ she says.

In the absence of God and soul
and any afterlife,
sex itself becomes holy.

– 69 –

Day five
Tomorrow, the op.
I'm frozen in the act
of giving birth to grapes;
as the hours pass,
they tarnish and dry.

The clues of the crossword
make a surreal poem.
I'm a cast baboon
presenting her bulging vulva.

– 70 –