The Air Year

Caroline Bird

• Publisher: Carcanet Poetry
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781784109028
• eBook ISBN: 9781784109035
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Poetry
• Index: Literature

The Air Year is a time of flight, transition, and suspension: the shrill air as you fall through love, before crash, comedown—commitment. The poet crosses challenging threshholds: fear of commitment, of motherhood, shame, and panic. 'I am proficient at beginnings, ' Caroline Bird says. This book goes further and (with her characteristic energy and exuberance) risks the next level. People run on treadmills facing blue walls, burn talismans in their gardens, and mime marriage with invisible wedding rings. Pilots bung bullet-holes with chewing gum. We cling on, to rickety rope-bridges, to something in the air, to one another. Bird's speakers exist in a state of suspension, trapped in liminal space between take-off and landing, a time of pure transition. Love is uncontrollable; joy comes and goes at hurricane speed. They walk to the cliff-edge, close their eyes, and step out into the air.

12

Nancy and the Torpedo

Nancy found an entire torpedo in the forest

just lying there like a beached whale,

coated in wet leaves

and decorated with glittering snail trails.

‘It’s a fucking torpedo,’ she said.

‘Is it… live?’ I said.

I didn’t know how torpedoes worked.

Were they like mines?

‘It’s inert,’ she said, suddenly an expert,

‘torpedoes don’t explode on land,

everyone knows that.’ She whistled like a plumber

surveying a damp patch, ‘He’s a beauty alright.

I reckon he weighs at least 600 pounds. 640, I’d say.’

‘He?’ I said, but Nancy was already straddling it,

spanking its rudder like the rump of a prize horse.

‘What’s a torpedo doing in a forest?’

Nancy rolled her eyes.

‘You always ask the most obvious questions, don’t you?

Can’t you just enjoy the moment?’

She’d already unzipped her trousers

and was touching herself, grinding up

against the girth of the weapon

and groaning gently. ‘Careful,’ I said.

Her orgasm gathered to a scream.

She pressed her sweating face

on the warhead and fell asleep on top of it.

The torpedo precisely matched the length of her body. 13

To my tired gaze, it seemed

as if they were both breathing,

Nancy and the torpedo, their chests

rising and falling together

like unsuspecting ocean waves.

I pictured them both in action,

underwater, Nancy’s legs wrapped around

its speeding shaft, her red eyes fixed like sniper

dots on the target ahead, a string of bubbles

flying out behind her like a chiffon scarf.

Eventually she woke, refreshed and cheerful,

patted the torpedo goodbye, hoisted on her backpack

and we continued our journey

as if nothing had happened.

‘Where are we going?’ she’d ask, every ten minutes or so.

‘We’ve just got to keep moving,’ I’d reply, pointing

in some arbitrary direction and striding with purpose,

trying to channel the sexual energy

of a self-propelled missile, ‘Keep on moving.’

The dread swished around my gums

like someone else’s tongue. If I had owned a penis

it would’ve secretly shrivelled in my pants.

‘We’ve passed this clearing before,’ Nancy said.

‘Different clearing,’ I said. ‘Those are our footprints

from four days ago,’ she said. ‘Different footprints,’ I said.

Then we saw the torpedo. Nancy laughed.

‘I suppose you’re going to tell me that’s a different torpedo?’

It was getting dark and cold. ‘I love you. I just love you

so much,’ I said, as Nancy remounted, hugging it

and whispering into its back, her mouth almost kissing

the metal. That’s when I lost it. 14

‘I’M SORRY I’M NOT A FUCKING TORPEDO!’

‘I can’t… blast through shit I’m

lost and I’m useless and I’ve got no fucking

idea where I am or what I’m doing. There. I said it.

Go ahead and dump me because I’m a piece of shit.’

There was a long silence.

Nancy straightened her spine like a dressage rider,

looked at me for an age then said,

‘How many...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Mid-air
• Dive Bar
• Nancy and the Torpedo
• Sincerely
• Checkout
• Temporary Vows
• The Red Telephone
• The Deadness
• The Ground
• Urban Myth
• The Girl Who Cried Love
• I Am Not a Falconer
• The Final Episode
• Naphthalene Heights
• Speechless
• The Insurmountables
• Circles
• Rope Bridges
• Sanity
• Surrealism for Beginners
• Rookie
• Little Children
• Emotional Reasoning
• Fridge
• Anaesthetic
• Flicker
• Drawn Onward
• The Golden Age
• Morality Play
• Prepper
• It Sneaks Up on You
• Fancy Dress
• The Tree Room
• The Factory Floor
• Loveborough
• Primitive Heart
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author
• Also by Caroline Bird from Carcanet
• Copyright