April
hereditary weakness
thrush
loss of money
a false statement
morbid dependency
staggering sickness
champerty
megrims
paranoia
an overdose
imprisonment
instable furniture

– Madame Weyrd.

 

The Ancestor

Wore boar hide, admired himself in polished tin

And in the waxed ivory cheeks of his daughters,

Sunk barbed hooks into their hamstrung calves,

Bemoaning their thin, pink blood

(Gifts, all that he himself had given them).

And ignored their pains upon horseback riding.

He would wake up the estate with hunter’s horns

In the dead of night, when there was no hunt

And drank by the barrel until he was flammable.

He would storm the gardens, wood axe raised,

To defend his title from Franks and Romans,

Or the Goths, or the Picts, or the Entitled Poor.

Although most bets made were on his scarlet fever,

Or his pagan love of crushed flowers and tonics,

In the end it was an exotic flatfish that lodged itself

Inside his hot pipe. And so, his house watched on:

His third and fifth wives quarrelling over legacies,

Waving his drunken paper promises overhead,

His sons wrestled for trinkets and land-plots,

The niece who painted forgot to look up from her easel

Until it collapsed, revealing her subject on his back,

The birdcages around his supine throne set alight with noise

A round of cawing applause rattled the room,

Legs akimbo, his face was cross-eyed and hurt

As his house descended around his blue-ing ears.