old poetry - ‘petra’
petra
She came in the summer.
The one when Christina turned
Sixteen, and we thought
We had grown up.
When we ate strawberries
Behind the boatshed, listening
To Siouxsie Sioux.
We called it ‘old wave’.
The sky is a petulant blue
cloudless, unforgiving
like us, and clarity
like silver tongues
and lennon/mccartney songs
seems to exist
for a moment.
petra, she says, without
the hellenic splendour
we were accustomed to.
she sits beneath
an andy warhol print, campbell’s soup
but instead of pop art
she is byzantine, lenten and loveless
with eyes flat as unlevened bread.
(another throwback to my creative writing with Mrs Ali, aged 16 days… I kind of like it. I’ve lost track of most of my poetry from my portfolio that year, but this one still hangs around. you may or may not have noticed that there’s a line from ‘summertime at tarras’ in here, ‘the sky is a petulant blue’, because 16 year old I WANT TO BE A WRITER Briar thought it was awesome and was very proud of it. I’m more ambivalent now, but hey)
