Home » Issues & Poems » ISSUE 31 » From IN THE JAWS OF A DOG

From IN THE JAWS OF A DOG

Maria Jastrzębska

I like taking a familiar phrase, or cliché, and turning it inside out. The first line of the poems in this sequence is exactly that, a phrase favoured by one generation trying to remind another of what once was. I wrote a single poem like this, but before I knew it I had a refrain that started tapping out a book-length sequence which I couldn’t stop. Such is the power of anaphora! I wanted to investigate the peculiarities of my own generation but also to question the categories of a distinct past and present which always seem more blurred to me. I write about my own life but in this new work I’m also interested in a more collective experience, an approach which writers such as Annie Ernaux or Niven Govinden, for instance, have explored. A child of immigrants, I am especially interested in transgenerational trauma and its echoes in a disintegrating world, how we internalise its effects and how that interweaves with our sense of self, gender and sexuality. I grew up in the shadow of war and live in ‘peacetime’, yet years later, here we are surrounded by devastating, terrifying wars. Each generation believes its experience is unique – it is, but the transgenerational nature of trauma makes a mockery of time. So much has changed. So much has not. What has emerged from my roller coaster ride through various remembered moments is a bildungsroman where the dead – of course – steal the show.

 

 

From IN THE JAWS OF A DOG

 

From IN THE JAWS OF A DOG  

                    

 

                     When I was your age

we kept secrets the way

people kept budgerigars

 

feeding them sunflower seeds

cleaning out the inside

of their cages

 

The budgerigars whistled

and trilled to reassure each other

they were safe

 

It was years before

they escaped

green-feathered revelations

 

spilling out of treetops

Neighbours complained about

them shrieking

 

But there were some things

not even the dead

spoke of

 

though I’m not sure now

if it was because they didn’t know

or wouldn’t tell

 

 

                     When I was your age

through the bristly

tops of trees

stars fell so fast

it was as if the sky

had been swept clean

The dead were asleep

                     which was unusual

                     We kissed slowly,

                     tak potwornie

                     się zakochałam,

                     choć wiedziałam, knew

                     and didn’t know

                     it wasn’t going to last

 

 

 

                     When I was your age  

                     we got our own back

 

on the dead who weren’t

                     like cats under the table

 

weaving velvet bodies round

our legs till we lowered them

 

a piece of chicken even potato

                     The cries of the dead

 

                     sliced into our ears

Their hunger made us choke

 

                     We waited till no one was looking

                     then as the dead tried to nap

 

                     complaining how weary they felt

                     we laughed yelling Wake up!

 

 Jumped up and down together

 stomped on their bone

 

                     When I was your age

meadows were purple, clouds blew

smoke through their nostrils

If you pissed the ground steamed

The world was on fire

though everyone knew how to fly

 

 

                     As I pronounced the universe 

                     mutable the dead nudged each other

we were going to change everything too

Some were gentle and whispered yes

you can do it just beware

of the dogs

                    Sure enough

along the horizon stood

rows of men, their dogs’ ears pinned back

against a flash of sky

The dogs on leashes choking 

 

 

 

                     When I was your age

to avoid scorpions at night

we’d shake out our sleeping bags

                     but I didn’t know not to eat

 

                     handfuls of mulberries picked

                     on a hillside and got the runs

Every morning the sun woke us

Sea more blue than anything I knew

 

washed us clean though if I sneaked 

into a hotel bathroom in the mirror

I’d see a witch her face leather,

split ends forked, snakes in her hair

 

To avoid spending our money

we lived on bean soup, cigarettes

shared a tsai tou vounou

or glass of retsina between two

 

                     I spoke languages I’d never learnt  

                     Words were scents I followed, to avoid

                     loneliness, savouring each like rigani,

                     pine; grammar a mountain path to climb   

 

 

                     Old women watched us, and since I could 

                     speak their dialects, they were kind        

                     I wanted to bury my face in the folds

                     of their black shawls

 

 

 

                    When I was your age   

                    my legs began to sing

                    Mostly it was tuneless a dull

                    judder behind my knees 

                    I couldn’t ignore   Clanging

                    which made it difficult

                    to drag my feet up stairs

                   Was ice-wind slapping

                    my legs or something inside

                    My skin burned legs shook

                    and ached then just as suddenly

                    a melody bubbled up so sweet

                    it rushed through the rest of me

                              I was slipping into clear water

                    where you see every stone magnified

                    each fish arching a rainbow back

                    My arms my collarbone lifted

                    and for a moment everything

                    that once hurt began to sing

 

 

 

                     When I was your age

I was so in love I didn’t know

 

what to say when she slept

with a friend of mine

 

I didn’t think I could stop her

He had no idea we were lovers

 

I didn’t say anything to him

I didn’t say anything

 

to so many people the silence

stretched – air, which over time

 

you no longer notice is unclean,

corroding each membrane

 

till you wonder what’s left

The dead who’d been so loud

 

whispered, then suddenly

after all their chatter

 

even they stopped, like birds

which take off at a single shot

 

                     When I was your age

each spring, like nestlings

                     which fall too soon

 

                     mauve and bare-skinned

                     the dead cheeped

and I blocked my ears

 

                     But I still heard them

mouths forever open

 

 

 

                     When I was your age

he said: there’s a trick                                                

I’m practising where you whip                                  

 

a cloth away from the table                                       

and everything remains standing

I saw cities of gleaming knives                                      

 

and forks, glasses for windows                                    

plates loaded like chess pieces

on a board, a universe

 

I longed to wreak such havoc,                                       

imagined my Mama’s tablecloths –

embroidered with cherries, birds

 

          starched for best, oilcloth for

          everyday – saw them flying

          until the time I saw myself

 

          (it only took a second) 

          as little more than a bolt

          of fabric which can be whisked away

 

          with a shudder of wind,

          while everyone carries on

          chewing their meat, raising glass

Join our mailing list

Your email: