A poem by Geraldine Clarkson

Look up and kiss me, London Pride, saxifrage of the city! Blake-naked, with William and his wife in the garden, like Adam, like Eve. Eve’s pudding for afters. Beguiled by limes. The very thinnest china, of the very finest willow pattern, the traditionallest apples and sweetest custard sauce, the goldenest cutlery, the lowest chair, and William, surreptitious as a fish, his knees scaly and prone to float backwards and to the side. Mirabelle! He salutes his wife. See the crimson peaks in the sky! See the awefullest East. I see your blushing breasts, my dear, and we are not halfway through dinner. We will go and play on the green. My tiger, my lamb. He will worm it out of me as usual, the dirty thing. I will sleep better, he’ll say, visited by hummingbirds and honeyed rose bits on my nipples. A maimed dove on guard at my bedhead.