agamemnon road

my first home was
my grandmother's place, where she lived
some of the time with the man who laughed,
drunk the day her husband was cremated and
there was some old austrian refugee lady upstairs in
a room or rooms I never saw: a boarder; it
was a boarding house and it
was cold, with hot water just briefly in the morning and
that same medicated tracing paper bogroll like at school and
a stuffed, real crocodile with marble eyes lurking on the dark
landing, scaring me almost every time and
in the living room, big blue glass bowls got filled
with peanuts and quality street as she kneeled bonily with pursed lips and
another cigarette, two bars on the fire on a bitter day and
two drinkers round a china lamp-post, I think it was a lighter and it
played how dry I am when you lifted it and I liked it more than
the eyes of the knickknack shrunken negro head on top of the tv set

my mum's dad had said
let me paint the room, they're coming home from the hospital and she said
no, I'll have it done but
she didn't do it, so
it was terrible in there and my mother cried and my nan said
alright, let's have a look at this baby then

and
she could never say my mother's name without saying 'er..' just in front of it, like
she couldn't quite remember it.