Fred and Elsie
Sweet clouds of pipe smoke
turn blue above his thinly silvered head
as Fred sits, back to the window,
with the Daily Mail spread wide in his hands
while Elsie holds his collar down
and runs the iron over it
before announcing
There's your shirt
and he replies
Put it there.
Then she comes to his pyjamas
with grey stripes all the way
from his ankles to his shoulders
and she asks him
Do you want these doing too?
To which he answers
If you're ironing anyway.
Then he turns the headlines
over and concentrates on sport.
Are you listening?
She knows to ask before she speaks.
He's listening through the paper
when she inquires about his diet
while she was away.
Chips on Monday at the chip shop, with fish.
What about Tuesday?
Pudding and chips.
And Wednesday?
Pie and chips.
Didn't you want a change you daft bugger?
I was full, what more do I want?
And she hands him a stack
of neatly folded handkerchiefs.
He blows his nose hard,
coughs up a ball of phlegm
and pads the tobacco tighter in the bowl.
Ten minutes later
he takes a refill from the pouch
and after asking if she's making tea
swaps the paper for the Radio Times.
What's on?
They're playing Tchaikovsky.
Smashing. The Pathetique?
Aye.
What else did you do when I was gone?
Not much.
She makes tea.
When he finishes his he starts puffing again
and once the smoke is thick
with the stem held fast in his teeth,
through the half of his mouth he can move
he asks
Did you have a good time then?
A Week by the Seaside
Don't use the sink.
Fred laughs. Bed and breakfast
by the sea in August
brings a change from Manchester.
They like the fishy smell
and Scarborough bay. Elsie says
It's only down the hall.
They'll never know.
After all these years
she can't tell when he's joking.
Drink a pint and piss a quart
he always says. She checks for the ceramic pot.
That'll do you.
Fred wakes up every hour.
Elsie sleeps through.
In the morning she looks under the bed.
You just made it.
Before he goes out for the paper
Fred looks back from the door.
I always stop when it reaches my thumbs.
David Chorlton was born in Spittal-an-der-Drau, Austria, and grew up in Manchester, England. After two years of growing bored in an insurance office he studied graphic design and began to paint, eventually beginning a short career as a commercial artist. He moved to Vienna in 1971.His first tentative lines of poetry were committed to paper in the early 1970s and contact with a small English-speaking writers group led to his first readings in Vienna. After three years in the design studio of a detergent company, he left to allow more time for painting. In 1978, he moved to Phoenix together with Roberta, his Arizona-born wife. Since then, his poems have appeared piecemeal in a long list of literary magazines and collections of poetry include FORGET THE COUNTRY YOU CAME FROM from Singular Speech Press, and OUTPOSTS from Taxus Press in Exeter, England. His translations of prose by Austrian writer Hans Raimund appeared in 1997 from Event Horizon Press as VIENNESE VENTRILOQUIES. Essays, reviews and other prose have appeared in a range of publications. His paintings, mostly watercolour, have been exhibited in Austria and the United States, and ASSIMILATION, a new chapbook, appeared from Main Street Rag.
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