Carole Coates

Carole's first collection "The Goodbye Edition" was published in 2005 by Shoestring Press.  Her poem "Daughters" is in The Forward Book of Poetry 2006.  She is published regularly in the literary press and has been placed in many competitions, such as The Peterloo Anthology and Arvon Poetry Competition Anthology.  She was holder of a Yorkshire Arts Award.  Last year she read at The Blue Room, Newcastle, The Poetry Library, Edinborough and the Lancaster Litfest.  At the moment, she is working on a series of poems about anorexia.

1.

There are people without chequebooks or clothes
who hide in the grass and will not speak to us
my mother has run off to join them

The bogyman has been and gone
and without any gothic nonsense
gravely gave her his permission

and we are left with all the grown-up tasks
and she will not help us although
we have written to her and burnt the letters

We have returned her crutches to the hospital
we have destroyed the analgesics and the pills
There is nothing left to worry about under the sun

But her extraordinary and egregious silence
shows she must have found for herself
unimaginable disenthralment.

2.

Because the dead refuse to pay their bills
Because the dead refuse to put on clothes
Because the dead no longer talk to us

we shall take no notice of them.
We have done all the boring things.
Attention should be paid to us -

maybe a lamp turned on in a bedroom
where no one has entered
or a phone call would be good.

But there is always someone
standing behind me who is
gone in the turn of a head

and something is signing its name
in the flurry of air by the poplars
in the row at the edge of the graveyard.

(This poem was placed in the Peterloo Poets Competition 2000.)

© 2004 Carole Coates

Visit my web site