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Raspberries by Kate Clanchy

By T.

31 August 2007

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Raspberries
Kate Clanchy

The way we can’t remember heat, forget
the sweat and how we wore a weightless
shirt on chafing skin, the way we lose
the taste of raspberries, each winter; but

know at once, come sharp July, the vein
burning in the curtain, and from that light
– the block of sun on hot crushed sheets –
the blazing world we’ll walk in,

was how it was, your touch. Nor the rest,
not how we left, the drunkenness, just
your half-stifled, clumsy, frightened reach,
my uncurled hand, our fingers, meshed,

-like the first dazzled flinch from heat
or between the teeth, pips, a metal taste.

MARGINALIA

One last thing –

ABOUT KATE CLANCHY

Kate Clanchy was born in Glasgow and educated in Edinburgh and Oxford. After working for several years as a teacher in London’s East End, she moved to Oxford. She has been a teacher in state schools for nearly 30 years, and is currently Writer in Residence at the comprehensive school Oxford Spires Academy, where she has nurtured creative talent among the pupils, many of whom have come to the UK as refugees. An anthology of the pupils’ poetry, England: Poems from a School was published… (more)

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