Ian McEwen

 

LUDWIG'S FRIDGE


Culture is an observance, or
that’s what the fridge is working on.
 
Culture is an observance or
at least it presupposes
an observance. Wittgenstein
was surely talking fridge
in that line. He was not
a worldly man but had
an early model much
like Doris Stogsdale’s
General Electric
and its sixty years
of whirring after jars
and packages and left-overs.
Gas can be as good
as thought with contents
to preserve, as Doris says
“It just followed us everywhere”:
that’s what the fridge is working on.
 
 
 
 
MUTUALITY

 
We must grow through others
like the razor wire in the tree.
 
‘We must grow through others’
think the active yakult ranks:
their pro-biotic legions clipped
to zip-wires for the gullet jump,
there to preserve and multiply
(commensally or symbiant according
to your theory). There are more cells
in the fridge than in our bodies
and this begs the question who
is eating whom? Does our bulk
success trump their success
of numbers? and would Aristotle
recommend the culture of the target
weight, that happy medium-large
we’ve reached where each of us
contains uncomfortably the others
like the razor wire in the tree.

 

 
FRIDGE RELIGION II

 
She hopes that electricity will always
be this chill and slightly blue.
 
She hopes that electricity will always
enter by the thinnest way
and be listened to, although
it has no sound itself
but her attention, ready made
of whirr and chirk.
She knows it when it heats
her, colds her, hurts her,
flings her gases wide
again, like twitters in
the garden. How it comes
or where it goes are not
her questions as she eats
it, wafer thin, the trickle
of it passing through, gifted
grace that will always
be this chill and slightly blue.
 

 
 
WHOSE FRIDGE IS IT ANYWAY?

 
The fridge respects the one that looks it
in the mouth. I measure up. I choose.
 
The fridge respects the one that looks it
in the eye, that cracks the pack, that
buys prime cuts and cooks them up.
How can docility survive but
through command, demand, as meat
needs brief fierce fire, as
children need clear discipline?
The two dead pigeons on the shelf,
glumly goosebumped and condemned,
are like non-swimming kids clumped
by the shallow end and crucified
with tart red bands to know
themselves unclean. Two breasts
apiece. They wear each shot
mark like a biro bruise.
The key is to keep them bloody
in the mouth. I measure up. I choose.

Copyright © Ian McEwen 2016

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Ian McEwen’s poems have appeared widely in magazines including Poetry Wales, Shearsman, Tears in the Fence, Long Poem Magazine, Rialto and Poetry Review. The Stammering Man was a winner in the Templar pamphlet competition 2010 and his collection Intermittent beings was published by Cinnamon in 2013. ‘Father lost lost’ was highly commended by the Forward Prize judges in the single poem category 2014. He is Treasurer of Magma and edited Magma 57. Ian has four children and lives in Bedford where he promotes the Ouse Muse open mic.