Distant Guns

A garden sun chases our ginger cat. Dad watches World War Two up close on the TV he grinds his teeth, a general forced to take a back seat. Mother in the kitchen, not her natural territory. She opens cupboards exploring contents. It is a blue and white kitchen made of trees that died in 1964. She shakes a martini like a blind cardsharp. Her wrists heron bones that click a gold-toothed chain. Flashes of recollection follow me up beige carpeted stairs. Small bathroom-toilet to the right, where once I saw mum naked. Oedipus lives down the hall as a young teenager. From my window I see the long narrow garden with its back gate. Passion-flower crosses entwining pine boards. When the Nazi Storm Troopers come I will fire down at them lobbing hissing grenades that land like angry cats onto their fleeing backs. Charley company lives in Vietnam they shoot from the hip. I am not sure which side of this on-going war they are on. In my British school atlas America is colored, blue or yellow, not Empire red like us. A patriotic gas stirs vague imaginings. A knock on my bedroom door. I can hear myself breathing heavily, as I jerk off. Keep out! Mum pauses to catch her breath. She is out of uniform, and speaking in Slo Mo to a camera in my head.