Diogenes Syndrome
He balances his Gladstone amongst her heaps of Time,
National Geographic, Liberator, asks, ‘How do you feel?’
She’s thinking, I like the blackness of the print,
finding insurgency at my wrists, numbness at the tips
of my index fingers, how images sometimes centre
themselves inside my palms, a peace demonstration
in Hyde Park, a black Raleigh bicycle propped against a rail,
the politician’s clenched fist, faces of the dead, or
bluebell woods…
He examines her study, the paper hands
which she faithfully cut
and stuck to the floors, walls, ceilings and panes.
She says, ‘They hold my house up.’
Maureen Jivani lives in Surrey England and has worked for the National Health Service for over twenty-five years. She has a pamphlet (chapbook) and a full collection of poems out with Mulfran Press.
