The format and general style is borrowed from a poem by Deborah Harding, which in turn was influenced by a poem by Terence Winch. Apparently, it's considered bad taste to write an autobiography before you reach 50. So, this is bad taste, in easy to swallow sizes.
Around 1980, a woman falls from a stool,
onto hard bakery tiles.
I am not present, but can still recall
the crack of skull on stone.
Around 1989, on the grounds of a pagan burial,
I'm attempting drunken sex with a girl from Liverpool.
The next day I ride
three hundred miles on a borrowed bike.
Around 1968, a man wearing patent leather shoes
and a herringbone jacket,
slides on ice and cracks
his collar bone. I am not yet born.
Around 1976, in a Citroen, three miles from home,
the man driving looks in the mirror,
asks me to recite my seven times table.
I am a generation away,
on the back seat.
Around 1978, a boy slides ten feet
down a sheer cliff face,
then rolls a further twenty on grass.
He returns home - cut, bruised and shaken.
I am just shaken.
Around 1982, standing at the entrance to a class,
a bigger girl with glasses, brushes by.
Her perfume makes me want to dive
into her pool, curl at the bottom like a water snail.
I don't know her name and
never smell her again.
Around 1975, a neighbour's cross terrier
enters our front room
- craps on the carpet.
I am the first to notice, but pretend I'm not.
