28
by Maria Apichella
Today the turquoise view
swoops faster, swirls like lime juice in a cold glass,
the bay flashes, tumescent, a noon-time joy, steep to the side.
The early moon a pale slice in blue. Scent of manure and hay blow,
sheep wink, coastline trees like brown twiggy hair blowing sideways.
My David’s a pebble of strength too bright,
too smooth to be flung.
Nothing’s certain but changing landmarks, sifting coves.
We’re aware of each other’s breathing; the Mini’s forced nearness,
the sun catching his knuckles, freckled wrist, silver watch,
his quiet shifting of the gears, dusty brown Topsiders stepping hard
on the gas rising high.
And down
to the mossy,
valley house. A white block
windowed memory.
We click still.
A net curtain moves.
Before I meet his mother
he takes me
among his father’s rocky fields,
shows me how to swindle
honey from a hive.
With a cigarette ‘just for this purpose’
he puffed acrid smoke like an old rusty engine.
A slow thrum,
the sound of tiny drills.
The conquered Gwenynen Fêl
short up, away into the blue,
her drones chasing like a chorus of boy-lovers.
I had been hungry.
He gave me the first sticky comb.
From Psalmody. Eyewear Publishing.
Forward Prizes for Poetry
Shortlisted for Best First Collection 2017
Psalmody
Maria Apichella
About Maria Apichella
Maria Apichella (b. 1985, Oxford) completed her PhD in English and Creative Writing at the University of Aberystwyth, after combining part-time study with several jobs: ‘Every aspect of life feeds into writing: from teaching to cleaning toilets, to working in a call centre by night to sitting in the Welsh National Library reading Dylan Thomas in rainy afternoons.’
Apichella won the Melita Hume Poetry Prize for the manuscript which became Psalmody. Her interest in poetry sprang from reading the Psalms as a child: ‘I was given a grown-up Bible aged seven’. Their influence lives on: ‘I used Psalm-like rhythms, metaphors and images, gaining inspiration from the human body, food and place.’
Psalmody, while remaining in discourse with the poetry of scripture, is also vividly worldly and contemporary in its depiction of the relationship between the religious speaker and her atheist partner: ‘I love to argue back, / Celtic talker, poet-mouth; you’ll never stop exploring, / taking everything apart like a nerd.’
