Being given a writing prompt about Dementia, Stone Court, Dog Eyes, and Self-Quarantine with Partners by Josie/Jocelyn Deane
Being given a writing prompt about Dementia
Scarlett Johansson is playing my grandmother
with dementia. Why shouldn't she?
Audience members will beat their breast/ howl
like Owen Wilson in Marly and Me.
The New York Times will praise ms. Johansson
for her tact/grace/respect for the source
material. The token, privileged ululation
from twitter will be silenced by a single tear
running down Scarlett's porcelain face as she asks me
who am I? We will collapse in one another’s embrace
as I say Gran, I prefer to go by Josie now and
she will not care, she will smile and brush my face with
a single perfect fingernail. I will scoop her
and bear her looped through my arm to the church
where grandad is buried; she will talk
about the war/ being molested by a British
composer in a limo and the audience will shiver in
their seats, like Michael Haneke's Oscar winning
movie, Amour. I do not slap my grandmother
in perfect despair. I love her empty-handed. I escort her
to the village green. Scarlett Johansson is
playing the lavender in the forest, the single blades
of each individual grass stalk. The children
snivelling on the chipping under the monkey bars,
their foreheads, red crowns. She will look
over the picturesque blue British hills and say I can
see Australia from here. I will remember
making out with my first queer love on the swings also
played by ms. Johansson in flash-back. They
mumble something beautiful/ life-destroying, this
is the line they will cut
to in ms. Johansson's inevitable Oscar victory over
exactly who you imagine. When she dies
we empty the furniture of her, what little
remains. Scarlett Johansson O beauty
is the clock on the mantelpiece, striking noon.
Stone Court
Happy places like
fireplaces, happy
places can't live
without windows
with frost. Happy
places, biscuits
hardening arm
chairs. The 90's brick
tv of a happy place
only broadcasts shipping
forecasts, BBC1, bad
graphics, classical
music, posh/angelic
voice occasion-
-ally repeating time.
The church peals
15, 30, 45, the hour in
expanding phrases.
Happy places of
china rabbits, books
of bad poems. Snow
buries Datsuns,
Triumphs with
ceremony. It's 3am- still
unimaginable time.
A happy place
for 6/7/8 year olds.
No one
down yet, you are still
there, girt by
strangers' photos, pith
helmets, Tudor ceiling
beams. Light
from the street acidic
as Orangina. Happy
places amber
w/ mosquito inside
potentially
liberating dinosaurs.
Dog Eyes
We don’t wake the baby- the greatest kindness
we can afford. Each door is one of Charlie’s teeth:
he scritches just concertedly enough to
wake us, like Lazarus. I have been teaching myself
- a phrasebook now of nights- to speak Charlie
enough to snarl, bare my canines at him
to conduct hatred through my claws as I lock him
out, each nail a blade, a burning bush, every
time he enters, settles on the duvet, and gets up
5 minutes later. I turn on my phone- let there be
etc- I see him, his eyes blaring at me, bat-light
in the unforgiving Apple whiteness. The skin between
bones almost transparent. The giant poster behind
you of Middle Earth and suitcases of our too little
clothes. His eyes are full of ghosts, like a sieve,
flowing in and out of the house where we are
guests. Your parents are sleeping on the sofa
they will bequeath us. I look at you, Charlie,
your comings and goings on tip-toe- a claw being
only a tip-toe grown long as a greyhound. You only
- skittering between the rooms you know and
immediately forget in a low whine. I can only
break bread with you, the whippet of you
impelled into an endless gifting of yourself- I
open the door, send you on your doggy way- leaving it
ajar, as a cherubim/principality wouldn’t. The house snores.
Self-Quarantine with Partners
First you exit, I’ll wrap half
the room in cellophane, then
hide in the grotty toilet
smelling of boy house
mates, as you
finish the bed, the bookshelf
the Ikea bin filled with
uber eats and tissue.
There’s only this
room; I get to daubing
lipstick, eyeliner, birthday water
-colours. We rotate out
our room like red-coats,
milkmaids on fancy clocks
stopping an inch from each
other's face, on the hour.
Every surface is covered
in lip-stick, reminders
to take meds at x time, notes on
brief sights out the window:
a pigeon nest in a side mirror
a husky and shih tzu sniffing each
other gaily as their owners wince,
a UFO flash as the telecommunication
tower sparks in the rain, like
nothing else. Instead
of Dungeons and
Dragons, we practice a new world
building. The other
sleeps on the couch, counting
the days until it's safe before
switching again.
Find more from Josie/Jocelyn on Twitter and Instagram and pre-order a copy of their book from Girls on Key.
Executive Producers
Daniel Henson
Sue White
