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Marie Isabel
Matthews-Schlinzig
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the poet
Marie Isabel Matthews-Schlinzig (MIMS) is a freelance translator, editor and author. Her poetry publications include her pamphlet kinscapes and the anthology The Joy of Living, which she edited to support the Maggie’s Centres. MIMS' work has been published by Dust Poetry Magazine, Dreich, Nine Pens Press and Visual Verse. She lives in Dunfermline, Scotland.
the poems
Breathe through
my roots
nights of waking amid coal-smoked absence
of air gasping dark horror mother’s
voice guiding me back to surface where
corals of plastic lungs grow
on the desks of pulmonologists
afternoons spent before metal
dragons that spit healing vapours or
in a body plethysmography diving
bell connected by mic to the outside of
effortless intake of nitrogen oxygen
carbon dioxide a thing of course unless
dad tears up when he leaves me
in the Alps for expert strangers to reset
my faulty pulmonary system
close to the Eagle’s Nest where Hitler owned
the mountain skies while Special
Children’s Wards dealt those considered weak
sedatives depressing respiration or
let them starve a slow deliberate death
meant to appear natural while
German physicians in the 1960s still opposed
ventilating neonates & the GDR
let wee preemies suffocate or drown –
at which point in this poem the girl
in my womb kicks hard & hesitates to
no madeleine
walking the dog
down a window-lit street
the wind delivers a familiar
heady fragrance
it draws my gaze
to the back of a woman
grey bob, dark jacket
wide skirt swishing
red
brown
white
she unlocks a door
and the thought
this could be my mother
now
cuts right through my middle
Tobi’s tales
Each morning we uncurl, you from your safe
corner, I from bed, into this, our togetherness.
Garden patrol, maybe a morsel of toast, buttered.
Then we put on armours: harness, shoes, a coat.
The lead, two-ended cord umbilical between
us, we stroll: always expectant, in any weather.
You rarely aim for straights but zigzags,
backs and forths. The hour strays along.
Each patch of grass, each leaf and stem
hold so much information. They’re endless
message boards, smells stacked on smells,
scattered by strangers, not quite randomly.
We walk, discovering: you stop, I stop, and
vice versa. We dance, wait for each other.
Sometimes you put your paws up on a wall
and raise your nose, take note. Then you plop
down onto all fours, stride on. You seldom
share what secrets you’ve uncovered.
Though we have some fixed routes – around
the golf course, into the deep sea of the
woods, down the old country lane filled with
with feathered life and the occasional deer,
each time we step out, it remakes us, we
never walk the same path twice.
The world is wondrous, frightful sometimes:
feet, disembodied, stick out under hedges,
canines off-lead bounce towards us fast,
humans are nervous, or calm, open-hearted.
You’ll be outside some more during the day
with A., and then at sunset, we three go
around the pond together, feed ducks and swans,
play hide and seek before the great Forth
amphitheatre, the bridges red, grey, white,
the harbour’s crane, blue, Pentland wonders.
At nightfall then, we tuck you in, cuddle, maybe
hum a lullaby, until you’re quite relaxed.
And soon, with twitching legs, huffing and puffing,
a growl, a little whine, you tell us stories of your
old home back in Bosnia, and with a deep intake
of breath, just like a sigh, you bind yourself to us
and us
to you.
Publishing credits
Breathe through my roots: Visual Verse (Vol. 10, Ch. 4)
no madeleine: exclusive first publication by iamb
Tobi’s tales: kinscapes (Dreich)