Patina

Silver figurine, two pieces that come apart, man and woman joined where they join, you pull her torso up and off him, the connection is his silver dick, small thing, fits in your palm, tarnished maybe or just that colour silver gets, Indian probably, the kind of object that’s functional – demonstrates the positions – but also just sits there on the shelf between the Irvine Welsh books like any other small sculpture, the woman’s arms in a particular position, the man’s legs, their faces serene or stylised, the whole thing the size of what, a chess piece? smaller? the kind of thing you pick up and show someone, look at this, and you separate the figures and they go oh, and you put them back together, the satisfying click or slide of metal on metal, and it’s the same one – or the same kind – that was in the set of de Sade’s asylum cell at Charenton in the film Quills, sitting among his things – bought where, a vintage shop? inherited? the internet? sitting there catching light the same way that Eldorado bottle does. 

Reynardine

He’s coming. He’s not coming.
He came back. He left before.
The fox in the garden.
The man at the bar.
Like he was bracing. Like he’d seen.
The Cart was black and shimmering.

He’s coming. He’s not.
I followed. I forgot.
Was I taken? Did I go?
The Cart was black. The answer’s no.
The answer’s yes. I told him so.

The Cart Was Black, The Answer’s No

Light fractures
across the surface of the Cart, dark, shimmering

Something crosses through a garden after midnight –
lampblack roses, a tail disappearing


You say rain sounds best
through an open window, we agree on that

The bells ring – I picture you there
Book frozen on bedstand, your graffiti everywhere

(“Only words,” but still the desperate recording)


Mud cakes under your nails again

Girls cry about you
years later, I’m one of them

Anne Briggs sings Reynardine

If a flower blooms the first time
because the light hits it right,

it doesn’t mean the light
was the purpose
of the flower.

M. Elizabeth Scott is based in Glasgow.