Amanda Dalton

Fantastic Voyage

She’s at the pictures with her dad or maybe she’s at home watching tv with her mum or on her own, and she’s shrunk. Wherever she is and whoever she’s with, she’s definitely shrunk and she’s inside the submarine diving at terrific speed through saline, heading straight into a circular abyss. She shuts her eyes and waits to die but when she opens them the submarine is floating in a watery wonderland and Owens says you may unfasten your belts so she does. Or maybe she stretches her legs on the old settee or takes a Malteser from the box dad bought at the kiosk and it tips – Maltesers rolling under the seat of the boy in front and the woman in front of him. Or maybe there are no sweets, but the submarine is definitely pulled off course again and her stomach definitely tugs and flips and all this happens at once and she thinks What if the submarine is inside me? What if it is? What if it never gets out of her or she never gets out of it? If years from now she’s lying on a table watching a screen as cameras prod her gut, her heart, her brain, searching for a miniature child still bathing in extracellular fluid, trapped in a shrunken submarine?


*


from Notes on Water


Today the water sings. Today I walk the bank
with someone else’s dog on a lead.
And it’s like the river’s saying Yes?
An ordinary day. Nothing doing here.
I watch a wagtail wagging stone to stone,
even the living-statue heron’s there,
powdered grey, and I ask the dog
if we should give it a coin for its trouble.
There’s a sycamore down and some branches
on the path but nothing like the fallen army
ripped apart that day in Ardnamurchan,
that defeated battlefield of trees
enough to make you weep. Then the dog
says flow and I say fucking hippy dog
and the river says
I’m thinking of the man who will leave in winter.

I am thinking of David Nash’s Wooden Boulder,
that great ball of oak, slipping downstream,
stuttering for months, coming to rest
in the estuary until the heavy rains, high tides,
dislodge it again and again and it’s gone. 

I am thinking of David Nash gently searching
for years, how he said It hasn’t vanished.
I just can’t see it. 

And the dog says That’ll do. Think that.
Hasn’t disappeared. You just can’t see it.


*


Nights I Squat

I hesitate to tell you but for years
I’ve been sheltering in your ear at night,
mostly quiet, curled between
the creak of tomatoes ripening,
the owl’s occasional screech.
Sometimes you’ve heard me as rain
on the roof or an echo of the words
that swim inside your head,
keep you from sleep.

I apologise. I was the roar at 3am
that had you going down with a torch
and knife. I was the squeak you thought
was the old shed door. Don’t be alarmed.
My song will not enchant you,
there’s no need to tie yourself to the mast
to save your life. I have no wings,
don’t play the harp. Think of me
as a touch of tinnitus that will pass.

Still, I can’t forget the night when
half-awake you pressed your fingers
to your ear. Was it a minor itch, an ache?
Or did you know I was there? 
You touched me and something whispered
in the dark. Did you hear?
 

    9     Fantastic Voyage

    10     Belly
    10     Takotsubo
    10     Gut
    10     A Ghost Story

    11     Look Inside!
    12     When Andrea was 7
    13     Auntie Irene says
    14     One day I watch
    15     Andrea’s father
    16     One day I ask
    17     Mum says Nancy Gardiner
    18     Janet Bradley says
    19     One day I go for a colonoscopy
    20     Peter B says
    21     Aged 9, Andrea doesn’t know
    22     One day, I was sawn in half

    23     Notes on Water

    39     Haunts and Apparitions
    41     Nights I Squat
    42     Magic
    44     December 1979
    45     Three Hauntings
    45        1  Pelican
    46        2  Girl in White with Trees
    47        3  Man Dressed as Bat
    48     Missing
    49     The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary
    51     like a tree
    53     The Possibility of Fog
    54     Ten Signs of Possession
    54         1  Superhuman Strength
    55         2  Knowledge of Previously Unknown Languages or Speaking in Tongues (glossolalia).
    56         3  Unnatural Body Movements
    57         4  Appearance of Wounds that Vanish as Quickly as They Appear
    58         5  Paranormal Capabilities
    59         6  Living Outside the Rules of Society
    60         7  Being Persistently Ill, Falling into Heavy Sleep and Vomiting Strange Objects
    61         8  Being Troubled by Spirits
    62         9  Being Uncomfortable, Ugly and Violent
    63         10  Making Sounds and Movements Like an Animal

    64     Aftermath

    67     Untitled
    68     Fantastic Voyage


    70     Notes
    71     Acknowledgements