Marilyn Longstaff lives in Darlington and is a member of Vane Women,the writing, performing 
and publishing collective. Her poems have been published in a range of magazines, in anthologies, 
and on the Web. Her first pamphlet Puritan Games(2001), which was featured by Independent Northern 
Publishers in their poetry project for Library reading groups in 2003, has almost sold out. 

In March 2003,she received an Arts Council Northern Promise Award to pay for mentoring towards a 
full collection, Sitting Among the Hoppers, which will be published in October 2004 by 
Arrowhead Press. She is working on another collection, Raiment, which reflects an ongoing 
obsession with shoes and sin.

 

Next of Kin

He asked me for my next of kin, “Just a formality
if anything happens on the hike.” I made up Mike, 
Mike Nicholls, 14, Spring Gardens, Hetheringstall,
M33 4ZU. I said he was my brother.

I hope he never has to contact him. Mike’s very shy.
He’s asked me not to put him down on forms, but
I’ve no other alibi. He’s 6ft 2 and blond, wears glasses
has a squint. His hair is thinning now

just at the temples. He works in a department store 
in Oldham. Never married; had a girlfriend once, 
called Sandra. She ditched him for a merchant seaman. 
Mike lived with Mum until she died.

Stayed on in the bungalow – it seemed easy. 
He’ll be 52 next birthday, January 5th. If I go first,
which seems quite likely, I’ll leave him 
all my worldly goods – they don’t amount to much:

a few bun pennies, my clothes, Love Me Do 
by the Beatles, some sticks of furniture. I travel light. 
What more could he ask from me? 
I’ve given him a life.
 

Les Pιrseοdes
The Night of Shooting Stars (August 13th 2004)

Imagine walking a coast path 
marked Sentier – 
the tide has turned 
and is seeping away.
Moored boats 
lean into muddy dreams 
while a fresh water channel 
shrugs free from its sea blanket.
Oyster beds, water tanks, small wrecks, 
rub away sleepfulness. 
Ignore the diversion inland, 
trespass by derelict outbuildings,
into twilight. 
Then you come upon it – 
a long long whitewashed 
single-storey lean-to
(in England
it would be straight out of Dickens)
windows, all facing out 
across Plouharnel Bay 
to campsite lights 
on the Quiberon peninsula.

We were expected,
greeted, welcomed into
white painted wood-lined interior
and loaded dining table– 
plateau de fruits de mer –
a leisurely feast
and lots of laughter.
And after, into the bright dark
we went outside for coffee,
drank Breton apple digestif, 
lay back in patio chairs, 
feet up on a makeshift table
to contemplate the Milky Way, 
Scorpio, the Plough (comme une casserole),
waited, waited 
with wide-eyed concentration
for fleeting fire-tails, 
silent dust from comets.
 

Tock

Even with my backed turned
and my hearing aid turned off,
I am aware 
of that insistent regular tock,
the second hand 
picking its bossy progress 
round the grubby-white face
of this common-room clock.

As cruel as mortal diagnosis,
it tocks institution, bells,
sweat, rules.
It is beyond time,
needs no winding, battery, electricity;
will out-tock, in its cross way,
bombing, plagues,
globally-warmed-floods.

God is this clock.
In the beginning was the tock.
There will be no ending.
 
The Colour of Samboo

Now he is the colour
of bleached bone
sheep’s wool
ivory

When he arrived in Lancaster
he was unpolished mahogany
dull from journeying
wedged and chained 
between ship’s timbers.
The only polished wood
oar handles, rubbed
by pull and sweat
all the way from Africa.

Abraham Rawlinson
came to the docks in person 
to check his raw material – 
felled mahogany 
to unload for wealthy furniture,
living mahogany 
which would  travel on, 
Triangular Trade
bound for the West Indies.

Samboo could go no further
snapped like guitar strings 
(his name in chiNyanja) 
jumped ship, “fell 
into a complete state 
of stupefication”
died a few days later
in a local alehouse
buried here without a coffin.

Now he is the colour
of bleached bone
sheep’s wool
ivory.

 
Who dunnit?

Two guys and a gal in a room full of people.
Champagne is on view but no-one is drinking.
Pearl Ivory’s pistol is tucked in her garter.
Tony has sand on the welts of his town-shoes
but Pearl and Stanislowsky don’t notice,
eyes fixed on the jewel-encrusted cover 
of the literary prize bible. 
Pearl is plotting the downfall
of that louse at the rostrum, Sam Slammer
who bangs on about ‘youf’, and
freeing ‘pomes’ from slim volumes,
university departments, delivering them
into the hands of The Clamouring Masses.
Pearl calls Sam Graffiti Scribbler – only cares
about bad lads who never had her chances. Writes off
any woman on the wrong side of 50. Meanwhile

poetry is lying dead under the table.


The Day
The day the electric kettle exploded
and shattered the leaded kitchen windows, 
Tom bit the bloody budgie's head off, 
spat it into his "Pelican ",
examined the mangled slimy mess with his pudgy fingers 
then threw the tattered torso into Ted's tank of terrapins, 
who ripped into it like a shredder, spat out the feathers.

Pity about the kettle. I put on a pan to boil some water,
in need of a brew of the life-giving health restorer
before the terrible toddler screamed himself into a tantrum. 
Imagine the build-up in that kettle - the release of pressure 
like a boil on your bum lanced by the horn of a unicorn. 
Well, I ask you, dear reader, what would you have done? 
I left the little sod to see red, legged it for pastures greener.