My Family and Other Superheroes

BOOK: My Family and Other Superheroes
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My Family and Other Superheroes

for the Edwardses

My Family and Other Superheroes

JONATHAN EDWARDS

Seren is the book imprint of

Poetry Wales Press Ltd.

57 Nolton Street, Bridgend, Wales, CF31 3AE

www.serenbooks.com

facebook.com/SerenBooks

Twitter:@SerenBooks

The right of Jonathan Edwards to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

© Jonathan Edwards 2014

ISBN: 978-1-78172-162-9

ISBN: kindle: 978-1-78172-164-3

ISBN: e-book: 978-1-78172-163-6

A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted at any time or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the copyright holder.

The publisher acknowledges the financial assistance of the Welsh Books Council.

Cover painting:‘Cock-a-Hoop' by James Donovan,
http://jamesdonovanart.com
/

Printed in Bembo by Bell & Bain Ltd, Glasgow.

Contents

1

My Family in a Human Pyramid

Evel Knievel Jumps Over my Family

Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren in Crumlin for the Filming of
Arabesque, June
1965

The Voice in which my Mother Read to Me

The Death of Doc Emmett Brown in
Back to the Future

Half-time, Wales vs. Germany, Cardiff Arms Park, 1991

How to Renovate a Morris Minor

Bamp

Building my Grandfather

Lance Corporal Arthur Edwards (1900-1916)

My Uncle Walks to Work, 1962

2

Anatomy

View of Valleys Village from a Hill

View of Valleys High Street through a Café Window

Colliery Row

USA Family Kebab House, Merthyr Tydfil

Owen Jones

Raskolnikov in Ebbw Vale

X16

Chartist Mural, John Frost Square, Newport

Capel Celyn

In John F Kennedy International Airport

FA Cup Winners on Open Top Bus Tour of my Village

3

Girl

Welsh National Costume

Us

The Doll

Decree Nisi

Jack-in-the-Box

The Bloke in the Coffee Shop

Aquafit

4

Bookcase Thrown through Third Floor Window

Restaurant where I am the Maître d' and the Chef is my Unconscious

Rilke at War

Seal

The Hippo

Flamingos

Cheerleaders

Bouncers

Nun on a Bicycle

The Bloke Selling Talk Talk in the Arcade

Starbucks Name Tag Says
Rhian

The Girls on the Make-up Counter

Karaoke

Brothers

The Boy with the Pump-action Water Pistol

The Performance

Holiday

On the Overpass

Acknowledgements

1

My Family in a Human Pyramid

My uncle starts it, kneeling in his garden;

my mother gives a leg up to my gran.

When it's my turn to climb, I get a grip

of my bamp's miner's belt, my cousin's heels,

say
Thank you
for her birthday card as I go,

then bounce on my nan's perm and skip three rows,

land on my father's shoulders. He grabs my ankles,

half holding me up and half holding me close.

Here he comes, my godson, Samuel Luke,

passed up until he's standing in his nappy

on my head. And now to why we're here:

could the Edwardses together reach a height

that the youngest one of us could touch a star?

Sam reaches out. He points towards the night.

Evel Knievel Jumps Over my Family

A floodlit Wembley. Lisa, the producer,

swears into her walkie-talkie. We Edwardses,

four generations, stand in line,

between ramps:
Smile for the cameras.

My great-grandparents twiddle their thumbs

in wheelchairs, as Lisa tells us to relax,

Mr Knievel has faced much bigger challenges:

double-deckers, monster trucks, though the giraffe

is urban legend. Evel Knievel enters,

Eye of the Tiger
drowned by cheers,

his costume tassels, his costume a slipstream,

his anxious face an act to pump the crowd,

surely. My mother, always a worrier,

asks about the ambulance. Evel Knievel

salutes, accelerates towards the ramps.

I close my eyes, then open them:

is this what heaven feels like,

some motorcycle Liberace overhead,

wheels resting on air? Are these flashes

from 60,000 cameras the blinding light

coma survivors speak of? Before he lands,

there's just time to glance along the line:

though no one's said a thing,

all we Edwardses are holding hands.

Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren in Crumlin for the Filming of
Arabesque,
June 1965

Sunday. The crowd beneath the viaduct

waves banners made from grocery boxes, bedsheets:

Welcome to the valleys Mr Peck!

Wind turns their chapel dresses into floral

parachutes; their perms don't budge an inch.

The emotion of it's too much for one girl's

mascara.
We love you Miss Loren!
My father

parks away from them, around the corner,

in his brand new car, a '30s Lanchester,

with stop-start brakes, a battery he shares

with a neighbour. All sideburns and ideas, a roll-up

behind one ear and a flea in the other

from my gran for missing Eucharist,

he coughs and steps down from the running board,

as two Rolls-Royces pull up opposite.

Gregory Peck, three years after being

Atticus Finch, steps from one, says
Good morning
.

From the other – it isn't! – it
is,
wearing her cheekbones.

My father's breakfast is nervous in his stomach,

but he grabs his
Argus,
pen, and
Yes
, they'll sign.

Her high heels echo away through the whole valley.

That's how my father tells it. Let's gloss over

how his filming dates aren't quite the same as Google's,

the way Sophia Loren formed her Ss

suspiciously like his. Let's look instead

at this photo of the crowd gathered that day,

he walked towards to share those autographs,

his fame. There, front and middle, with her sister,

the girl he hasn't met yet – there. My mother.

The Voice in which my Mother Read to Me

isn't her good morning, good afternoon, good night voice,

her karaoke as she dusts, make furniture polite voice,

her saved for neighbours' babies and cooing our dog's name voice.

It isn't her best china, not too forward, not too shy voice,

or her dinner's ready, your room looks like a sty voice,

or her whisper in my ear as she adjusts my tie voice.

It's not her roll in, Friday night,
Lucy in the Sky
voice,

her Sunday morning, smartest frock, twinkle-in-the-eye voice,

that passing gossip of the vicar with the Communion wine voice.

It's not her ‘Gateau – no, ice cream – no… I can't make the choice' voice.

It's not her decades late, fourth change, ‘Is this skirt smart enough?' voice.

It's not her caught me with the girl from number twenty-one voice.

That voice which she reserved for twelve-foot grannies, Deep South hobos,

that sleepy, secret staircase, selfish giants, Lilliput voice.

That tripping over, ‘Boy, why is your house so full of books?' voice.

The Death of Doc Emmett Brown in
Back to the Future

I sit here in the darkness with my father,

slurping Pepsi, passing popcorn round.

The Libyans come fast around the corner,

pump Doc Brown with automatic fire.

My feet are dangling, inches from the ground.

I sit here in the darkness with my father,

as Marty hits 88 miles an hour,

goes back to '55, to warn Doc Brown.

The Libyans come fast around the corner,

pump Doc Brown with automatic fire:

he gets up, dusts his bulletproof vest down.

I sit here in the darkness with my father,

who starts to gently snore. Now time goes quicker:

the cinema's knocked down, moved out of town;

the Libyans come fast around the corner

on DVD. My boy asks for
Transformers

instead as, from the wall, his bamp looks down.

I sit here in the darkness with my father.

The Libyans come fast around the corner.

Half-time, Wales vs. Germany, Cardiff Arms Park, 1991

Nil-nil. Once the changing room door's closed,

the Germans out of sight, the Welsh team can

collapse: there's Kevin Ratcliffe, belly up

on the treatment table; Sparky Hughes's body

sulks in the corner, floppy as the curls

which he had then. All half, they've barely had

a kick. Big Nev Southall throws his gloves

to the floor, like plates in a Greek restaurant

as, in tracksuit and belly, Terry Yorath

looks round at a room of Panini faces:

he doesn't know yet he will never get them

to a major finals. He does know what to say.

Ryan Giggs, still young enough to be

in a boy band, stands up, doing an impression

of his poster on my wall. The crowd begins

to ask for guidance from the great Jehovah

and Ian Rush's famous goal-scoring

moustache perks up. He's half an hour away

from the goal that cues the song that makes his name

five syllables. What he doesn't know

is I'm in the stand in my father's coat,

storing things to tell at school next day.

My father pours more tea from his work flask

and says
We got them now butt, watch
and asks

again if I'm too cold. What we don't know

is we'll speak of this twenty years from now –

one of us retired, one a teacher –

in a stadium they'll build down by the river.

But now it's Rushie Sparky Southall Giggs.

8.45: the crowd begins to roar,

wants to be fed until they want no more.

The tea tastes just like metal, is too hot

and something catches – right here – on the tongue.

The changing room door opens and they step out,

toe-touching, stretching, blinking under floodlights –

it's time to be the people we'll become.

How to Renovate a Morris Minor

That's him, in the camouflage green overalls,

hiding under the car all day from my mother.

What is he but a pair of feet, my father,

muttering prayers to God and the sump gasket,

wearing oil drips, enough zips for all

his secrets? On his back, he pokes a spanner

up at a nut, as if unscrewing heaven;

grease-fingers make a crime scene of the kitchen.

He gives the stars in his bucket to the bonnet

and when he sees his face in it then it

is smiling. His foot on the accelerator

makes the world go, his right arm at the auction

can't say
No
and when the day is over,

that's him, that's him – he's snoring on the sofa,

Practical Classics
open on his lap –

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