Catherine Edmunds
Chess
Angus McLintock has memorised every argument
in Claude F Bloodgood’s seminal work, The Tactical Grob,
not because it’s his favourite opening, but because
his chess books have been disappearing.
When challenged, Angela looks at him
like he’s an idiot. He once took part in a simultaneous
against a Polgar, but this carries little weight. Angela
still thwarts his every move. She won’t play chess,
but happily sends him off to congresses.
‘Have a nice time dear. Toodle-pip.’
She offers to make sandwiches.
‘Oh, I’ll get something with Brian.
We’ll go down the pub.’
He’s away this week, Leeds, tough to get a foothold,
but Brian and the gang look to him to make his mark.
He’ll do it—he loves to grind an opponent down.
It’s the one thing that brings him satisfaction.
He wonders what Angela does when he’s away.
She says she’s writing a book, but she hides the page
when he passes, and the document is password protected.
One time he asked what she’s writing; she said it’s like
that fifty shades book, only rather than grey,
it’s emphatically chequer-board. Black and white,
weighted pieces, a classic Staunton set.
She laughs at him,
Says ‘Staunton’ again, smacks her lips.
‘Green baize bottoms’.
In Leeds, he downs his pint of John Smiths
goes back to analysing Brian’s last county game,
understands what’s gone wrong
and is patience itself, explaining.
Party Games, and after
I’ve managed to wangle a trip to the front
to pin the tail on the donkey.
We’re ready to kiss, kick or torture;
they watch, they loathe, but there’s no fear,
just flesh wounds, raspberry jelly.
Why are you so proud of me?
I survived, that’s all, shrouded in dust,
led by dead men. I hear a drumroll,
buffaloes thundering over the plain, and so begins
the next war. The first shells pass over
wearing party hats, doctors walk quickly
through wards spreading tinsel and fear,
a stinking mule trails human blood
and exchanges of names: truth, dare or compromise.
The lady in the front row leaves,
thoughtful, a little bit sad, like rhubarb.
This Syrian crispness troubles her, but it
keeps on digging. One day she’ll find
an ancient perambulator to take her home.
Nobody hears the explosion that kills them.
I’d give a lot to live with the children
riding abandoned Afghani tanks, I long
for a big Suffolk breeze, for clouds
the colour of mussel shells.
A shutter bangs in the wind, a burnt-out truck
at the roadside—still alive or just pretending?
If we could edit our lives there’d be no risk, no fun.
There’s a need for frivolity, balloons, it’s been
too long since I last pulled apart a barn owl pellet
to play with the bones of voles. The grief is sharp
on the faces of those who stand in hard, bitter silence,
who claim these games are not murder.
Lamb Stew
Let me tell you about my mother’s lamb stew:
never wholesome, warming, rich with fat,
but thin as water, fragments of boiled rag,
bulbous white barley, lukewarm.
I went round last week and she served a hot meal—
aubergines, peppers, tomatoes, onions,
stewed in good olive oil, fragrant with thyme,
bursting with nutmeg and moschokarido.
She’d swapped my dad for an ancient Greek,
black eyes set deep in leathery wrinkles.
She told me they weren’t cadavers yet;
he pinched her arm, and she giggled, girlish,
but I miss toast, made from soft sliced bread
losing its crust an hour before anyone’s up.
I miss canned tomatoes, charred and acidic.
I don’t think Mother misses my dad, not yet—
but I miss lamb stew: thin as water, clear as love.
Catherine Edmunds is a writer, artist, and professional musician from North-East England, whose poetry has appeared in many journals, including Aesthetica, Crannóg, Poetry Scotland and Ambit. She was the 2020 winner of the Robert Graves Poetry Prize.
