Poem
Linda France
Bernard and Cerinthe
Bernard and Cerinthe
Bernard and Cerinthe
If a flower is always a velvet curtainonto some peepshow he never opens,
it’s a shock to find himself, sheltering
from the storm in a greenhouse,
seduced by a leaf blushing blue
at the tips, begging to be stroked.
He’s caught in the unfamiliar ruffle
of knickerbockers or petticoat, a scent
of terror, vanilla musk. If he were
not himself, he’d let his trembling lips
articulate the malleability of wax;
the bruise of bracts, petals, purple
shrimps; seeds plump as buttocks,
tucked out of harm’s way, cocos-de-mer
washed up off Curieuse or Silhouette.
But being Bernard, he’s dumbstruck,
a buffoon in front of a saloon honey
high-kicking the can-can. Can’t-can’t.
He attempts to cool himself, thinking
about seahorses, Hippocampus erectus,
listening to the rain refusing to stop,
soft against the steamed-up glass.
© 2014, Linda France
Bernard and Cerinthe won the Poetry Society\'s National Poetry Competition 2013.
Linda France
(United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 1958)
Author of seven full collections of poetry and many pamphlets and collaborations, and editor of the influential Sixty Women Poets (Bloodaxe, 1993), Linda France is an expansive force in contemporary British poetry. Her work is finely-tuned and wide-ranging, encompassing a verse biography of the eighteenth-century Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, a book of rengas, and poems about gardens, the past, an...
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Bernard and Cerinthe
If a flower is always a velvet curtainonto some peepshow he never opens,
it’s a shock to find himself, sheltering
from the storm in a greenhouse,
seduced by a leaf blushing blue
at the tips, begging to be stroked.
He’s caught in the unfamiliar ruffle
of knickerbockers or petticoat, a scent
of terror, vanilla musk. If he were
not himself, he’d let his trembling lips
articulate the malleability of wax;
the bruise of bracts, petals, purple
shrimps; seeds plump as buttocks,
tucked out of harm’s way, cocos-de-mer
washed up off Curieuse or Silhouette.
But being Bernard, he’s dumbstruck,
a buffoon in front of a saloon honey
high-kicking the can-can. Can’t-can’t.
He attempts to cool himself, thinking
about seahorses, Hippocampus erectus,
listening to the rain refusing to stop,
soft against the steamed-up glass.
Bernard and Cerinthe
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