by Bethan Tyler
REBIRTH ON THE HINTERLAND ROAD
I. LAUGHARNE
WHITE HOUSE HALF-FALLEN into the sea.
Sea outstretched like hands, open to
The laughter of gulls and cormorants.
The birds slip in and out of this world
Like perfect static. They peck at apples
In the garden. They flash living loot.
Blush of clover on the lawn. Doorways
So low a bumped head seems a blessing.
Air so salt I’ll taste it for days after I leave.
Soon I’ll be in America. Dylan left this, too,
For New York, for dark paneled wood and
Vermouth, cognac, whiskey.
“I've had 18 straight whiskies. I think that's
The record!” said Dylan the dying man,
Ego-tripping on beautiful verse.
If only he could see the clover now, a girl
Mad as birds under a bower of fruit trees.
Here I am, gossiping with my mad companions.
Soon I’ll be in America, writing limply of
My love for Laugharne, the wide sweep of
His patio, its cackling emptiness.
II. HAVERFORDWEST
I felt the haunting before she told me
He’d died in there, my aunt’s cruel father.
I slept on the floor and felt chill, thought the
Storm at the eaves was a spillage of blood,
Awoke to smoke-yellow walls, grease
Blooming from every doorknob and bedpost.
I scrubbed it from my hands, but the soap was
His soap, sliver of fat like his remaining body,
And I was worse than before, sing-songing
For the storm to let up, trampled like
Sappho’s hyacinth, purpling the pink bathroom.
Wet carpet in the womb of the house, slick
With memory like all things in west Wales, where
Land is nothing more than a smudged windscreen,
A fog rising daily from the sea. The whole place
An exercise in attrition. In later dreams
I walked a harbor. Underfoot, bathroom carpet
Bruised like a body in the night. Before me,
A wine-dark sea. Nothing lost in translation.
I walked for miles, awoke glittering, my feet crystal
As salt. It was morning, and the cruel man’s ghost
Had just slipped out the window.
III. ST. DAVID’S
I rose from the chapel’s floor.
I rose from the chapel’s floor,
And I was weeping, and the salt
Was the salt of the sea. The sky
Outside had opened. Belly slit open.
Dead seagull in the sand.
No noise on earth like this. Torture
Of the wind. Drunk choir of
Welshmen. I rose from the floor,
And I touched the headstones.
Slabs of marble, so much like
Bodies. Here I am, they say,
Here I am, a ghost. I joined
The choir. Choirs sing because
They must. I sang.
The sea called for my body, for
Their bodies. I kept on singing.
The sea went quiet. The chapel
Filled with water. I opened
My mouth and went home.
BETHAN TYLER is a disabled poet and former radio DJ. She lives in Portland, Oregon, with her partner and a cat named Suzie (after Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne”). Her poems have been published in The Chattahoochee Review, Fjords Review, Redivider, and Frontier Poetry.