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Fiona Ritchie Walker
I'm originally from Montrose (now living in Blaydon, nr Newcastle) but have renewed my relationship with Aberdeen, taking my son to and from university. I have two poetry collections published, Lip Reading (Diamond Twig) and Garibaldi's Legs (Iron Press) plus work in various magazines and anthologies including New Writing Scotland's Queen of the Sheep (2005). My short stories will be published in Ellipsis 2, (Comma Press, November 2005). And I now have my own website! www.fionaritchiewalker.co.uk
Poems
ANGUS PALETTE
I know the colour of Thrums,
that the wind is granite grey
softening to a well-washed school jersey,
that dreiled fields are double-knit,
brown skeins from the Scotch Wool Shop,
that geese match the inside sheen of razor shells
and buckies are bigger versions of their eyes.
I dream in the new green of April parklands
that doesn’t travel well to Fife, the Mearns
or beyond the Glens without losing its youth.
Open this bottle of pale Usan sand
that I carry with me, let it run
through your fingers, picture mid-summer
light on dunes, smooth as sun-kissed skin,
the ruins of Red Castle above us,
Angus sandstone crumbling on lips,
dissolving in blood, seeping into bones.
Count to ten. Open your eyes.
Tell me in your new-found language
the colours that you see.
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SLEEP OVER
They had brought America with them.
Their Hershey bars and root beer,
their own language.
In the American school
at the foot of the Angus glens
they were taught a different history.
The day my parents were guests at the US Navy Ball
I stayed overnight and ate cheese squeezed from a bottle.
I read The Cat in the Hat for the very first time.
Charlene suggested ice cream, laughed
when I ran out listening for the chimes of the van
while she opened up the icebox.
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STRIP
He gets the man to machete the sugar cane into pieces
then pass it through the car window,
and she says, it doesn't look sweet,
so he tells her
strip it with your teeth.
She watches as he peels the brown and green,
revealing sticky sinews.
This one's ripe, he says,
now you try.
The cane is hard, her teeth sink in
but nothing moves.
Here, take mine, he says
and they swap.
She is watching his white, even teeth, the way
his tongue flicks between his lips,
the way he doesn't care
that his chin and neck are glistening.
There is a sweet darkness spreading down
the blue of his shirt and she says
you're a messy eater,
so he tells her
look at your own top, missy,
on the day that she learns how to strip.
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