Triptych with Scenes from Life

Leica Virgin

Spain, I have relished your gift of villa, pool. Tied knots
of a bikini at my pale, bony hips. This rare trip
happening before my mother works out I like cigarettes,
weigh myself daily, get into cars with boys. As a family
we are learning how to holiday, be in heat, eat new things.
Our tourists’ amble diverted by a newsstand, Madonna’s glossy
jut. I offer new coins, and the rest of the day is a hot, peach room.
Cross-legged on tiles. Shot after shot of a goddess posturing,
her trade with the lens spread across bare knees.

198 Long Wave

My father is homesick for bad news. Forfeits
sunshine for a villa’s chair, his brow wrinkling
above a body count printed on papery leaves.
My sister says I remember wrongly, that before
we drove to the ferry through the excitable night,
he packs the 2-pin adapter and slimline Beolit 600,
his four children soon making splash on a pool’s sunned
lip, while one man, in one afternoon, runs across a
Berkshire parish and commits something called a spree.

Breaking the Journey Home at A Cheap Hotel

Where the threat to my chastity will become
apocryphal. Four men, six, a dozen. Boasting
red Speedos and suggestive holler in the corridor,
my scrabble several doors down at the lock.
Parents realise their separate floors mistake, haul
my mattress up a flight to join interior of siblings,
sprawled and nescient, bedbugs burrowing with intent.
Better to station at the airless window, shun sleep for
street noise, be the one to fathom adult night.