Two pieces of work by Shirley Bell.

My daughter says that when I'm dead she'll show her kids this picture
and they'll know me.


I'm encased in ivory faille, high necked, long sleeved, severe.
It's a kind of armour to protect me from the fear of falling, failing,
or of you failing to appear. I thought it would be less than this.
Dried flowers, witnesses pulled in from their everydays to ours,
a registrar, looking at his watch. Unfortunately your mum wants
more. Late born, her twinned afterthought, she has standards
for you, but my dad's dead and it's we who foot this bill.

We're ruthless and we cull the relatives: cheerfully eliminating
aunties, cousins, children under three, which went down
well. I hire the dress; that's cheap. I dress my bridesmaids up
in nighties. (Long, quite pretty, sprigged with flowers on navy blue
and I don't think that they knew). Practical, you always are, you
wear an ordinary suit. For everyday. The gale has flung my veil
across my face, daffodils are lurching, the dress and I are hurtling

to the porch. The choir is singing just for us. Later I learn your mum
has spent the journey down spotting crematoria and graveyards.
Over chicken, your dad gives me the gift of how much
he had disliked me when we met, but now I am OK. I'm not that
grateful. In this photograph I'm back in normal clothes again.
I'm looking at you with a minxy grin. We’re off to Paris. Hah! Later
I photoshop my auntie out and my son says that it is rather Stalinist.




Eavesdropping at the Almeida for Tina

I've started raiding people's lives for inspiration;

it's a shameless way of building up a poem.

You like the way I write my overheards but wish

they could be lighter. The hospital would be dark,

of course, but even in the library the talk was of

a funeral after which 'she can move on', which

I doubt. Now I'm eavesdropping at the Almeida,

hoping for some light-hearted piece of chatter,

polished to an anecdote.  It's my daughter's birthday.

We've come to see James's Turn of the Screw

and have already upset someone at the bar by

queue jumping by mistake. ‘Perhaps next time

you'll serve your customers in order’. We run away

with wine in plastic cups and prop them on the balcony.

It takes an age for us to see the steward in the stalls

is telling us to move them in case they fall and we feel

a bit embarrassed. While we wait for the first act

Im talks about her year in France. I used to go to stay

and she'd come to Lille to see me off. ‘Did I ever tell you

how a guy came up to me after you left? He asked me

to go back to his to make a sex film with him? I said

in French I don't understand because I can't speak French,

and 'Mais....' he said. 'But.... '’ We laugh a lot at this

and I think I'll write this down for Tina as it's still a kind of

exploitation, no? The play's had bad reviews, all the

nuances are gone. But it doesn't matter; obediently I jump

on cue at every scare. Though I do suspect

the audience should not be laughing quite as much as this.


Copyright  Shirley Bell