My Family and Other Superheroes Read online

  My Family and Other Superheroes

  for the Edwardses

  My Family and Other Superheroes

  JONATHAN EDWARDS

  Seren is the book imprint of

  Poetry Wales Press Ltd.

  57 Nolton Street, Bridgend, Wales, CF31 3AE

  www.serenbooks.com

  facebook.com/SerenBooks

  Twitter:@SerenBooks

  The right of Jonathan Edwards to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  © Jonathan Edwards 2014

  ISBN: 978-1-78172-162-9

  ISBN: kindle: 978-1-78172-164-3

  ISBN: e-book: 978-1-78172-163-6

  A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted at any time or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the copyright holder.

  The publisher acknowledges the financial assistance of the Welsh Books Council.

  Cover painting:‘Cock-a-Hoop’ by James Donovan, http://jamesdonovanart.com/

  Printed in Bembo by Bell & Bain Ltd, Glasgow.

  Contents

  1

  My Family in a Human Pyramid

  Evel Knievel Jumps Over my Family

  Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren in Crumlin for the Filming of Arabesque, June 1965

  The Voice in which my Mother Read to Me

  The Death of Doc Emmett Brown in Back to the Future

  Half-time, Wales vs. Germany, Cardiff Arms Park, 1991

  How to Renovate a Morris Minor

  Bamp

  Building my Grandfather

  Lance Corporal Arthur Edwards (1900-1916)

  My Uncle Walks to Work, 1962

  2

  Anatomy

  View of Valleys Village from a Hill

  View of Valleys High Street through a Café Window

  Colliery Row

  USA Family Kebab House, Merthyr Tydfil

  Owen Jones

  Raskolnikov in Ebbw Vale

  X16

  Chartist Mural, John Frost Square, Newport

  Capel Celyn

  In John F Kennedy International Airport

  FA Cup Winners on Open Top Bus Tour of my Village

  3

  Girl

  Welsh National Costume

  Us

  The Doll

  Decree Nisi

  Jack-in-the-Box

  The Bloke in the Coffee Shop

  Aquafit

  4

  Bookcase Thrown through Third Floor Window

  Restaurant where I am the Maître d’ and the Chef is my Unconscious

  Rilke at War

  Seal

  The Hippo

  Flamingos

  Cheerleaders

  Bouncers

  Nun on a Bicycle

  The Bloke Selling Talk Talk in the Arcade

  Starbucks Name Tag Says Rhian

  The Girls on the Make-up Counter

  Karaoke

  Brothers

  The Boy with the Pump-action Water Pistol

  The Performance

  Holiday

  On the Overpass

  Acknowledgements

  1

  My Family in a Human Pyramid

  My uncle starts it, kneeling in his garden;

  my mother gives a leg up to my gran.

  When it’s my turn to climb, I get a grip

  of my bamp’s miner’s belt, my cousin’s heels,

  say Thank you for her birthday card as I go,

  then bounce on my nan’s perm and skip three rows,

  land on my father’s shoulders. He grabs my ankles,

  half holding me up and half holding me close.

  Here he comes, my godson, Samuel Luke,

  passed up until he’s standing in his nappy

  on my head. And now to why we’re here:

  could the Edwardses together reach a height

  that the youngest one of us could touch a star?

  Sam reaches out. He points towards the night.

  Evel Knievel Jumps Over my Family

  A floodlit Wembley. Lisa, the producer,

  swears into her walkie-talkie. We Edwardses,

  four generations, stand in line,

  between ramps: Smile for the cameras.

  My great-grandparents twiddle their thumbs

  in wheelchairs, as Lisa tells us to relax,

  Mr Knievel has faced much bigger challenges:

  double-deckers, monster trucks, though the giraffe

  is urban legend. Evel Knievel enters,

  Eye of the Tiger drowned by cheers,

  his costume tassels, his costume a slipstream,

  his anxious face an act to pump the crowd,

  surely. My mother, always a worrier,

  asks about the ambulance. Evel Knievel

  salutes, accelerates towards the ramps.

  I close my eyes, then open them:

  is this what heaven feels like,

  some motorcycle Liberace overhead,

  wheels resting on air? Are these flashes

  from 60,000 cameras the blinding light

  coma survivors speak of? Before he lands,

  there’s just time to glance along the line:

  though no one’s said a thing,

  all we Edwardses are holding hands.

  Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren in Crumlin for the Filming of Arabesque, June 1965

  Sunday. The crowd beneath the viaduct

  waves banners made from grocery boxes, bedsheets:

  Welcome to the valleys Mr Peck!

  Wind turns their chapel dresses into floral

  parachutes; their perms don’t budge an inch.

  The emotion of it’s too much for one girl’s

  mascara. We love you Miss Loren! My father

  parks away from them, around the corner,

  in his brand new car, a ’30s Lanchester,

  with stop-start brakes, a battery he shares

  with a neighbour. All sideburns and ideas, a roll-up

  behind one ear and a flea in the other

  from my gran for missing Eucharist,

  he coughs and steps down from the running board,

  as two Rolls-Royces pull up opposite.

  Gregory Peck, three years after being

  Atticus Finch, steps from one, says Good morning.

  From the other – it isn’t! – it is, wearing her cheekbones.

  My father’s breakfast is nervous in his stomach,

  but he grabs his Argus, pen, and Yes, they’ll sign.

  Her high heels echo away through the whole valley.

  That’s how my father tells it. Let’s gloss over

  how his filming dates aren’t quite the same as Google’s,

  the way Sophia Loren formed her Ss

  suspiciously like his. Let’s look instead

  at this photo of the crowd gathered that day,

  he walked towards to share those autographs,

  his fame. There, front and middle, with her sister,

  the girl he hasn’t met yet – there. My mother.

  The Voice in which my Mother Read to Me

  isn’t her good morning, good afternoon, good night voice,

  her karaoke as she dusts, make furniture polite voice,

  her saved for neighbours’ babies and cooing our dog’s name voice.

  It isn’t her best china, not too forward, not too shy voice,

  or her dinner’s ready, your room looks like a sty voice,

>   or her whisper in my ear as she adjusts my tie voice.

  It’s not her roll in, Friday night, Lucy in the Sky voice,

  her Sunday morning, smartest frock, twinkle-in-the-eye voice,

  that passing gossip of the vicar with the Communion wine voice.

  It’s not her ‘Gateau – no, ice cream – no… I can’t make the choice’ voice.

  It’s not her decades late, fourth change, ‘Is this skirt smart enough?’ voice.

  It’s not her caught me with the girl from number twenty-one voice.

  That voice which she reserved for twelve-foot grannies, Deep South hobos,

  that sleepy, secret staircase, selfish giants, Lilliput voice.

  That tripping over, ‘Boy, why is your house so full of books?’ voice.

  The Death of Doc Emmett Brown in Back to the Future

  I sit here in the darkness with my father,

  slurping Pepsi, passing popcorn round.

  The Libyans come fast around the corner,

  pump Doc Brown with automatic fire.

  My feet are dangling, inches from the ground.

  I sit here in the darkness with my father,

  as Marty hits 88 miles an hour,

  goes back to ’55, to warn Doc Brown.

  The Libyans come fast around the corner,

  pump Doc Brown with automatic fire:

  he gets up, dusts his bulletproof vest down.

  I sit here in the darkness with my father,

  who starts to gently snore. Now time goes quicker:

  the cinema’s knocked down, moved out of town;

  the Libyans come fast around the corner

  on DVD. My boy asks for Transformers

  instead as, from the wall, his bamp looks down.

  I sit here in the darkness with my father.

  The Libyans come fast around the corner.

  Half-time, Wales vs. Germany, Cardiff Arms Park, 1991

  Nil-nil. Once the changing room door’s closed,

  the Germans out of sight, the Welsh team can

  collapse: there’s Kevin Ratcliffe, belly up

  on the treatment table; Sparky Hughes’s body

  sulks in the corner, floppy as the curls

  which he had then. All half, they’ve barely had

  a kick. Big Nev Southall throws his gloves

  to the floor, like plates in a Greek restaurant

  as, in tracksuit and belly, Terry Yorath

  looks round at a room of Panini faces:

  he doesn’t know yet he will never get them

  to a major finals. He does know what to say.

  Ryan Giggs, still young enough to be

  in a boy band, stands up, doing an impression

  of his poster on my wall. The crowd begins

  to ask for guidance from the great Jehovah

  and Ian Rush’s famous goal-scoring

  moustache perks up. He’s half an hour away

  from the goal that cues the song that makes his name

  five syllables. What he doesn’t know

  is I’m in the stand in my father’s coat,

  storing things to tell at school next day.

  My father pours more tea from his work flask

  and says We got them now butt, watch and asks

  again if I’m too cold. What we don’t know

  is we’ll speak of this twenty years from now –

  one of us retired, one a teacher –

  in a stadium they’ll build down by the river.

  But now it’s Rushie Sparky Southall Giggs.

  8.45: the crowd begins to roar,

  wants to be fed until they want no more.

  The tea tastes just like metal, is too hot

  and something catches – right here – on the tongue.

  The changing room door opens and they step out,

  toe-touching, stretching, blinking under floodlights –

  it’s time to be the people we’ll become.

  How to Renovate a Morris Minor

  That’s him, in the camouflage green overalls,

  hiding under the car all day from my mother.

  What is he but a pair of feet, my father,

  muttering prayers to God and the sump gasket,

  wearing oil drips, enough zips for all

  his secrets? On his back, he pokes a spanner

  up at a nut, as if unscrewing heaven;

  grease-fingers make a crime scene of the kitchen.

  He gives the stars in his bucket to the bonnet

  and when he sees his face in it then it

  is smiling. His foot on the accelerator

  makes the world go, his right arm at the auction

  can’t say No and when the day is over,

  that’s him, that’s him – he’s snoring on the sofa,

  Practical Classics open on his lap –

  his eyes dart under their lids as he sleeps,

  like Jaguars he’s racing in his dreams.

  Bamp

  That’s him, with the tweed and corduroy

  skin, wearing the slack gloves of his hands,

  those liver spots like big full stops. That’s him

  passing time with his favourite hobby, which is

  you know, pottering, or staring closely

  at the middle distance, enjoying the magic tricks

  his watch does. His pockets are for special things

  he has forgotten, no one fills the holes

  in crumpets like he does, and in his wallet

  is a licence from the Queen and what it means

  is he can say what the hell he likes and you

  can’t do nothing. That’s him, with a cupboard full

  of tea cosies, a severe hearing problem

  round those he doesn’t like, gaps in his smile

  and stories, a head full of buried treasure

  and look, that’s him now, twiddling his thumbs

  so furiously, it’s like he’s knitting air.

  It’s only him can hold the air together.

  Building my Grandfather

  He comes flat-pack, a gift for my eighteenth.

  We tip the bits out on the living room carpet:

  nuts and bolts, a spanner, an Allen key,

  tubes halfway between telescopes and weapons.

  At first he goes together easily:

  slippered left foot clicks into the ankle,

  shin joins at a perfect right angle.

  We have more of a problem with the right knee,

  but my father remembers it was always gammy

  from twelve-hour shifts, labouring in tight seams.

  I fit the lungs, pumping in mustard gas

  which filled each breath he took from 1918.

  Something seems to be missing from the heart

  and for a while we search beneath the sideboard,

  but then my father says it’s probably

  for the old man’s brother, who joined up when he did

  and didn’t make it back. The cheek and neck

  and nose slot in and soon, we’ve almost got him:

  my father holds the lips, the final bit

  before he opens his eyes and I meet him.

  A glance in the mirror at what he’s going to see:

  a pale-faced boy by an electric fire,

  Nike swoosh like a medal on my chest.

  It’s then I say Stop. What will he make of me?

  Lance Corporal Arthur Edwards (1900-1916)

  You took the River Ebbw to the Somme

  in your canteen, and never brought it back,

  but it’s still there, each time I look out my window.

  I picture you there, holding the bottle under

  to catch the water which proved you’d make it home.

  Mid-river, stooping, shorter than your shadow,

  your Sunday trousers are rolled up to your knees

  so your mam won’t kill you. A sixteen-year-old flamingo.

  Now your face is blown
up, above our mantelpiece;

  you’re prey to the latest image manipulation.

  Your eyes are horror movies’; your eyes are God’s.

  You’re close to the portrait of your elder brother

  as he was to you when the blast hit. You look like each other:

  his painted face is a sorry imitation.

  My Uncle Walks to Work, 1962

  He has a summer job as a postman,

  so races up at six. In the living room,

  my gran is poking the fire, cursing my grandad

  who’ll die before I’m born.

  Out of the house and down the hill,

  past The Crown, sometimes repenting the night before.

  He rounds the corner by the block of flats,

  or would do but it isn’t there yet,

  into the sorting office,

  knocked down when I was a kid.

  He shoulders his bag of mail

  and staggers back up the hill,

  into his street, into his house,

  my gran still poking and cursing,

  up the stairs. He drops the sack on the bedroom floor

  (careful not to wake my father

  who has to get up for work in an hour)

  and goes back to bed.

  He’ll do the delivery when he’s properly rested.

  Let him sleep. He has much ahead of him:

  a bag of mail, a wife, three children,

  five (and counting) grandkids

  and every year he buys me a hardback copy

  of the winner of the Booker Prize.

  2

  Anatomy

  These shoulder blades are Snowdon, the Brecon Beacons.

  Walk gently on them. This spine is the A470;

  these palms are Ebbw, Wye, Sirhowy. This tongue

  is Henry VIII’s Act of Union, these lungs

  pneumoconiosis, these rumbling guts

  the Gurnos, this neck Dic Penderyn. This manner

  of speaking is my children, my children’s children.

  These vital organs are Nye Bevan, this liver

  Richard Burton, this blood my father. These eyes

  have been underground for generations; now

  they’re adjusting to the light. This gap-toothed smile

  is the Severn Bridge, seen from the English side.

  View of Valleys Village from a Hill

  From here you see how small it is, how narrow: