Amnesia
by and published in Edition Three of Pomegranate
He remembered that room – familiar as a film scene
or déjà vu – when, spending the afternoon
as a ship trying to lose itself adrift inside of her,
he tried again to place the curtains and wallpaper
in the shifting context of some past event:
was it there he had dreamt in useless premonition
of his own being there; the sky gently darkening?
Thoughts firing off in their hazy distortion: the time
made its bid to escape him – six, seven in the evening –
as the river of her poured its way through him, the last
explanation (that certain rut and slide of the mattress)
fell utterly beyond him; but just then the door clicked,
opened, and the woman in its gape made the girl
blush and shrink; memory resolving to force its way in.
Ben Wilkinson
Ben Wilkinson’s poems have appeared in publications including Poetry Review, Orbis, The Frogmore Papers, Magma and the TLS. A pamphlet of poems is forthcoming from Tall Lighthouse in November 2008.