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Michele Grieve
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the poet
Michele Grieve was Poet in Residence for The Urban Tree Festival 2022/23, and a recipient of funds from Arts Council England's Developing Your Creative Practice. She graduated from the Faber Academy Advanced Poetry Course in 2023, and has had work published by WildFire Words, Obsessed With Pipework and Anthropocene. Currently collating her first poetry pamphlet, Michele can be found hugging trees, her five cats and her family in Hertfordshire, where she's also undertaking Bardic training.
the poems
Sunday Roast with My Family
At our faux Chippendale dining table, Marie Antoinette
stabs her wig-mice with scarlet talons if
they try for a morsel of her stuffing.
Her head lolls to one side, we’re
midway through my revolution.
It wasn’t a clean strike.
Plasma and cells sprint to flavour the gravy.
To her right the shadow-man loiters, his
wispy nervous edges flicker like the memory
of remorse, unsure where they should end.
He slices off each finger because he can.
He cannot remember the last time he saw his own face.
The brother who denies his blood lurks under the table,
eating dog fur off the Axminster, trying to angle a view
up my skirt.
No one stops him.
I say nothing.
The cosplay mother calls me by my dog’s name then
feeds him her breast.
ACT TWO:
'THE TWENTY-YEAR SCRIPT'
GENRE: PSYCHOLOGICAL HORROR
CHARACTERS:
MOTHER (54) SWAN-NECKED, HER SPINE CLINGS TO A MEMORY OF DIGNITY BUT NOW HAS CLOSED RANKS AROUND HER HEART. AN ECHO CAN BE HEARD OF A 'WELL-PUT-TOGETHER' WOMAN, YET BLOTCHY FOUNDATION REVEALS YESTERDAY’S FACE. THE ONCE 'ELIZABETH TAYLOR' HAIR NOW MATTED WITH ELNET, BATTLING TO RETAIN ORDER.
DAUGHTER (20) A WEIGHTY PHYSIQUE OF A BODY WEARING ITS SHAME. BAREFACED, HER HAIR IS MID-LENGTH-LANKY WITH PREMATURE WHISPERS OF GREY. DESPITE THE CIMMERIAN SHADE, HER EYES HAVE A GLINT OF ÉLAN VITAL. NO ONE KNOWS HOW THIS IS POSSIBLE.
SETTING:
1930s house, stands alone, held captive by two villages, each a mile away, both too far to seek help at 4am. The untamed garden to the front has a semicircular drive, allowing no one to ever truly arrive, or leave. A maternal willow tree reaches roots under the house, raising concrete and concern.
The living room is coated with nicotine and anger. Everywhere is busy. Every room is loud. Faded school photographs offer a nostalgia for obedience. The red velour sofa is draped with lace antimacassars; once delicate and white, now tired and soiled. An anxious Axminister lay buried under decades of dander and despair. Sofa reclined; the mother catches up with friends on Coronation Street. An ashtray erupts beside her whisky, both work in unison to flavour the air. The daughter smokes her dummy.
Mother: (peeling her eyes off the screen)
Prefer your fringe to the side, it’s far more slimming.
(Daughter drags on her fag to cauterize her wound. Mother sips whisky to anesthetize her everything.)
Mother: (eyes glued back on the screen)
I’ll make you a mango Slimfast for tea.
The scene repeats ad infinitum
without intermission.
Gen P
We stay awake, just in case,
like those 'poorly nights' when
they were a babe,
except so very not.
The universe felled, they schooled
themselves to swallow fear,
breathing broken glass,
no memory of air.
2020 liquified my children’s insides, and
pain cannot leave without a name.
I know of a woman
who found her son
hanging in his room.
He used his school tie.
So, we stay awake,
just in case,
longing for those 'poorly nights'
when they could scream and cry.
Publishing credits
Sunday Roast with My Family / ACT TWO: 'THE TWENTY-YEAR SCRIPT':
exclusive first publication by iamb
Gen P: Obsessed With Pipework (No. 107)