mother (dream diary)

I do not know how bad you were.
Alternating from
a tragic heroine
to Juno wreathed in cigarette smoke
sat in the corner of the room,
a silhouette without a face
lit up by a council-flat hearth
and cross-legged, black skirt and heels.

And then you’re just a Christmas goose,
lain on its back with open legs,
the flesh uncooked, gelatinous,
vagina like a spy-hole in a toilet wall.

Having been not 13 when
the dreamscapes called to me,
I need to know just what you did,
out in the farthest reaches of
the Freudian bizarre,
a gypsy traveller across
my child’s consciousness...