There are women in the house
A feast of them in the kitchen
Excited
High-pitched
Well-dressed women
in high heels.
Seven bottles of white wine ready, chilling,
a choice of Gins, ice, quinine,
feminine time
in the back of the house.aa
The front room is for exiles.
Louis sleeps,
Paul composes
It’s too soon to know whether there’ll be leftovers
to go with le vin du Val de Loire.
That’s a masculine tipple
the dog won’t taste.
There’s Netflix for company,
that’s androgynous,
voluminous
for us.
Us men don’t complain.
A house divided is a house subsided,
the women retired to storylines,
men to their separate ways.
After all, what does an English Setter desire from his master who sits enthroned on a sofa
This dog begrudges nothing,
even monkfish tails roasted in Parma ham,
even goats’ cheese coated in pomegranate and cashew nuts,
even balls of something alongside beetroot and blackberries.
They can get sloshed on Vermentino
for all a couple of testosterone junkies care.
May they scoff La Brie et Le Bleu
Sauvages
Formages
Dommages
And when the women find tartes
tantalising
may they feel stuffed.
The jaw that rests on the carpet
is turned away from the piano
the girl of the house used to play
before her lessons.
She’s out tonight
drinking Capri Sun.
That’s one less woman at the table,
one less mouth for scoops of honeycomb ice cream from SuperValu or Liam Ryan or What-You-Ma-Call-Em.
This dog begrudges nothing,
unlike the women who vie for second helpings.
He pays no attention to the hunger of women,
unless they run out of wine,
start telling dirty jokes
or leave early.
From Bath to Cork with baby Grace 