She’s in the cooperative housing project, surrounded
by hulking sons – four in all.
No father now and each
a new start, each potential, some
loving and some loathing. There’s
two enormous dogs
and no space.
In the corner the HD TV, 37inches, blazes
whatever lifestyle TV show that peeks and pores into parallel lives.
There’s one on Ritalin and others angry,
shouting out.
Each year she deposits one
Into the care of the YMCA
Grow up! be free!
Work out
how to be adults.
Leave me please leave me she’s pleading.
But come home.
And piles of junk food ordered in, there’s
ready beer and cigarettes.
A hot house – it’s harder
escaping.
What torment and turmoil, despair and excessive dreaming,
impoverished speculations
project in such impossibilities.
She downs
more wine and more wine and
adopts more loafers and strays.
Celebrates and criticises.
Hug and shouts.
‘I’d like another baby before it’s too late!’, She cries.
This is terrifying.
Even the dog is confused.
Turd in the corner with the beer cans.
Broken windows at midnight.
A sudden influx of video recorders, ipods and
A lot of weed.
There’s ambulance calls and overdoses.
There’s crying into the night.
And some lucky escapes.

What’s happened here, Medea?
You know you must bring order,
Some nurture and nutrition.
Some inspired solace and succour so its
easier now to feed your boys
something lasting, something final, something to sort it all out and
tasty. Something calming it all down and
making it manageable.
Something which
they’ll recognise.
A family meal.

*********************************************************************************

An Online Curse

Gina Wisker

Logging on, just browsing
Lured in by the
Seduction of the website’s endless promise
She decided to update to
learn those other skills
Those dreamweavers those
new links new contacts and perhaps New jobs
an online curse! At last
something of reward, the promise that
‘this will change your life!’
No problem entering the codes and details and
Signing herself away. She’s
Encountering new contacts she’s
clicking deeper and deeper through the links
as darker website laced with green and purple
gives way to spidery depths, each one revealing
demands for arcane passwords
keys
to levels never dreamt of, where some
dedicated engagement is essential
for the outcomes –
details of which
she’s not quite figured out yet so
night after night clicking and clicking
with cookies enabled she’s past stages and through e labyrinths
inextricably enmeshed in social networks and
deeper in the contracts as web portals upon web portals open until
realising too late this was no typo, she’s
signed up, sealed and soon delivered.
Who would have thought that keeping up to date
Could be the death of you?