Archive
In the Lab
We begin by laying carpets of rodent cells,
then rest the naïve human life on top.
Look at these heart cells clumped together,
watch how our science makes them dance.
We drop them nutrients once a day
and we divide each new growth
every week. Yes, there are occasional errors:
sporadic bone may grow in heart
but we progress: we can diminish overcrowding
and starvation, all non-productive masses die.
Maureen Jivani’s poems have appeared in the United Kingdom, the United States of America, New Zealand and Australia both online and in print magazines including Frogmore Papers, The Glasgow Review, Magma, nthposition, Orbis, The Rialto, Seam, Smiths Knoll, and The Wolf. Her first full collection of poems, Insensible Heart, is available from Mulfran Press. See’s also been featured at Peony Moon.
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.
The Economy of Porn
She voices no words
for her long absence,
her wasted frame
the time it takes
to make her face,
to fix her hair
and reach the set
where she strips
to the waist,
pours molasses
over her breast
as the camera films
the inevitable spill
to the ribs
before fading to black.
by Maureen Jivani
The Economic Heart
Boris married Maria, the butcher’s widow, on a bright day last December. It was a small affair. Although the villagers were respectful of Boris’s profession many were still reeling from the butcher’s death at thirty-two. He was too young for a heart-attack, although Boris had signed the death certificate himself.
Maria had married the butcher on a chilly day last May. It was a grand affair. The ladies adored the butcher for his nutritious sweet sausages and the men were grateful for his unrelenting generosity during the recession. Women had deprived their families of breakfast eggs for months, in order to present the happy couple with a giant cake. Men had gone willingly without ale for a week.
On the night of their honeymoon, the butcher urged his young wife to consider starting a family. Maria pulled the candlewick bedspread over her shoulders and looked at him with such child-like intensity that he felt ashamed.
The next day Maria cut her hair short, locked away her treasured make-up and took to wearing ankle socks. The butcher came back that evening to no supper, and finding her curled on the sofa like a stray kitten, gasped, ‘My god Maria!’
When Boris arrived and had thoroughly examined Maria in the privacy of the marital bed, he reassured the butcher that ‘such regressions into childhood were not uncommon in young brides,’ and ‘that Maria needed only daily counselling sessions with him to resolve the matter.’ The butcher wept as Boris shrugged and said, ‘six months’.
After the first session Maria improved. She discarded the socks, glossed her lips, and her cheeks took on a healthy glow. She began to cook her husband the hearty meals she had promised before they were married, and at night she would whisper ‘soon, my love, soon.’
by Maureen Jivani
qarrtsiluni 