Poem
Pascale Petit
Remembrance of an Open Wound
Remembrance of an Open Wound
Remembrance of an Open Wound
Whenever we make love, you sayit’s like fucking a crash –
I bring the bus with me into the bedroom.
There’s a lull, like before the fire brigade
arrives, flames licking the soles
of our feet. Neither of us knows
when the petrol tank will explode.
You say I’ve decorated my house
to recreate the accident –
my skeleton wired with fireworks,
my menagerie flinging air about.
You look at me in my gold underwear –
a crone of sixteen, who lost
her virginity to a lightning bolt.
It’s time to pull the handrail out.
I didn’t expect love to feel like this –
you holding me down with your knee,
wrenching the steel rod from my charred body
quickly, kindly, setting me free.
© 2010, Pascale Petit
From: What the Water Gave Me: Poems after Frida Kahlo
Publisher: Seren, Bridgend
From: What the Water Gave Me: Poems after Frida Kahlo
Publisher: Seren, Bridgend
Pascale Petit
(France, )
Pascale Petit was born in Paris, grew up in France and Wales and lives in Cornwall. She is of French/Welsh/Indian heritage. Her eighth collection, Tiger Girl, from Bloodaxe in 2020, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection, and a poem from the book won the Keats-Shelley Poetry Prize. Her poems have been broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and 4, The Poetry Archive and Australia’s ABC Radi...
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Poems of Pascale Petit
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Remembrance of an Open Wound
Whenever we make love, you sayit’s like fucking a crash –
I bring the bus with me into the bedroom.
There’s a lull, like before the fire brigade
arrives, flames licking the soles
of our feet. Neither of us knows
when the petrol tank will explode.
You say I’ve decorated my house
to recreate the accident –
my skeleton wired with fireworks,
my menagerie flinging air about.
You look at me in my gold underwear –
a crone of sixteen, who lost
her virginity to a lightning bolt.
It’s time to pull the handrail out.
I didn’t expect love to feel like this –
you holding me down with your knee,
wrenching the steel rod from my charred body
quickly, kindly, setting me free.
From: What the Water Gave Me: Poems after Frida Kahlo
Remembrance of an Open Wound
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