My Family and Other Superheroes

by Jonathan Edwards

Overview

Leaping from the pages, jostling for position alongside the Valleys mams, dads, and bamps, and described with great warmth, the superheroes in question are a motley crew: Evel Knievel, Sophia Loren, Ian Rush, Marty McFly, a bicycling nun, and a recalcitrant hippo. Other poems focus on the crammed terraces and abandoned high streets where a working-class and Welsh nationalist politics is hammered out. This is a postindustrial valleys upbringing re-imagined through the prism of pop culture and surrealism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781781721629
Publisher:	Seren Books
Publication date:	04/01/2014
Pages:	64
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

Jonathan Edwards has written for Big Issue Cymru magazine, written speeches for the Welsh Assembly Government, and currently works as an English teacher. He won the Terry Hetherington Award in 2010, was awarded a Literature Wales new writer’s bursary in 2011, and in 2012 won prizes in the Cardiff International Poetry Competition and the Basil Bunting Award. His work has appeared in a wide range of magazines, including Poetry Review, the North, Poetry Wales, and New Welsh Review.

Read an Excerpt

My Family and Other Superheroes

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By Jonathan Edwards

Poetry Wales Press Ltd.

Copyright © 2014 Jonathan Edwards
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78172-164-3

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CHAPTER 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 –

    his eyes dart under their lids as he sleeps,
    like Jaguars he's racing in his dreams.


Bamp


    That's him, with the tweed and corduroy
    skin, wearing the slack gloves of his hands,
    those liver spots like big full stops. That's him

    passing time with his favourite hobby, which is
    you know, pottering, or staring closely
    at the middle distance, enjoying the magic tricks

    his watch does. His pockets are for special things
    he has forgotten, no one fills the holes
    in crumpets like he does, and in his wallet

    is a licence from the Queen and what it means
    is he can say what the hell he likes and you
    can't do nothing. That's him, with a cupboard full

    of tea cosies, a severe hearing problem
    round those he doesn't like, gaps in his smile
    and stories, a head full of buried treasure

    and look, that's him now, twiddling his thumbs
    so furiously, it's like he's knitting air.
    It's only him can hold the air together.


Building my Grandfather


    He comes flat-pack, a gift for my eighteenth.
    We tip the bits out on the living room carpet:
    nuts and bolts, a spanner, an Allen key,
    tubes halfway between telescopes and weapons.
    At first he goes together easily:
    slippered left foot clicks into the ankle,
    shin joins at a perfect right angle.
    We have more of a problem with the right knee,
    but my father remembers it was always gammy
    from twelve-hour shifts, labouring in tight seams.
    I fit the lungs, pumping in mustard gas
    which filled each breath he took from 1918.
    Something seems to be missing from the heart
    and for a while we search beneath the sideboard,
    but then my father says it's probably
    for the old man's brother, who joined up when he did
    and didn't make it back. The cheek and neck
    and nose slot in and soon, we've almost got him:
    my father holds the lips, the final bit
    before he opens his eyes and I meet him.
    A glance in the mirror at what he's going to see:
    a pale-faced boy by an electric fire,
    Nike swoosh like a medal on my chest.
    It's then I say Stop. What will he make of me?


Lance Corporal Arthur Edwards (1900-1916)


    You took the River Ebbw to the Somme
    in your canteen, and never brought it back,
    but it's still there, each time I look out my window.
    I picture you there, holding the bottle under
    to catch the water which proved you'd make it home.
    Mid-river, stooping, shorter than your shadow,
    your Sunday trousers are rolled up to your knees
    so your mam won't kill you. A sixteen-year-old flamingo.

    Now your face is blown up, above our mantelpiece;
    you're prey to the latest image manipulation.
    Your eyes are horror movies'; your eyes are God's.
    You're close to the portrait of your elder brother
    as he was to you when the blast hit. You look like each other:
    his painted face is a sorry imitation.


My Uncle Walks to Work, 1962


    He has a summer job as a postman,
    so races up at six. In the living room,
    my gran is poking the fire, cursing my grandad
    who'll die before I'm born.

    Out of the house and down the hill,
    past The Crown, sometimes repenting the night before.
    He rounds the corner by the block of flats,
    or would do but it isn't there yet,

    into the sorting office,
    knocked down when I was a kid.
    He shoulders his bag of mail
    and staggers back up the hill,

    into his street, into his house,
    my gran still poking and cursing,
    up the stairs. He drops the sack on the bedroom floor
    (careful not to wake my father

    who has to get up for work in an hour)
    and goes back to bed.
    He'll do the delivery when he's properly rested.
    Let him sleep. He has much ahead of him:

    a bag of mail, a wife, three children,
    five (and counting) grandkids
    and every year he buys me a hardback copy
    of the winner of the Booker Prize.

CHAPTER 2

Anatomy


    These shoulder blades are Snowdon, the Brecon Beacons.
    Walk gently on them. This spine is the A470;
    these palms are Ebbw, Wye, Sirhowy. This tongue

    is Henry VIII's Act of Union, these lungs
    pneumoconiosis, these rumbling guts
    the Gurnos, this neck Dic Penderyn. This manner

    of speaking is my children, my children's children.
    These vital organs are Nye Bevan, this liver
    Richard Burton, this blood my father. These eyes

    have been underground for generations; now
    they're adjusting to the light. This gap-toothed smile
    is the Severn Bridge, seen from the English side.


View of Valleys Village from a Hill


    From here you see how small it is, how narrow:
    terraced houses gone square-eyed from looking
    too long at the homes opposite, while people
    lug their lives to bus stop, chip shop, chapel.
    From here, I could reach down

    and fuck with them. Look, here comes my sister
    with her latest bloke. Watch now as I take
    his hair between thumb and forefinger and gently
    pull: his eyebrows rise in shock, as if
    to compensate. From here,

    you feel the way God feels if God is
    lonely: it's all wind blow-drying the grass
    for its big night out, radio-friendly birdsong,
    sheep doing their thought balloon impressions.
    From here, I could destroy everyone I know
    by blinking. From here, I could step off

    the world. My father comes out of the shop,
    cracking a rolled-up Argus against his hip,
    doing the walk I nicked from him.
    He lights a cigarette mam can't stub out:

    from here I'll see him safely home,
    scan miles around for speeding cars,
    watch his breath rise through the air,
    disappear before it reaches here.


View of Valleys High Street through a Café Window


    Out there, policemen in attention-seeking
    fluoro-vests eye up a single mam
    pushing a pram, her head down and her face
    so much a frown, it's like she's trying to mow

    the pavement. Brollies bob above each head
    like thought balloons, if everyone were thinking,
    Fuck me, it's raining. They're not thinking that,
    these lovers who hold hands at just the height

    of shopping bags, or this girl who smokes a fag
    and rides a bike past, like a really crap
    steam train. A man with a cumulonimbus
    beard enters a phone box and I wait

    for him to emerge as Superman. He checks
    the tray for change, as his hot-water bottle
    wags its tail. In this window, our ghosts,
    those silly sods, sit at the pavement table,

    eating cake from their left hands and getting
    soaked. A board outside the travel agent's
    puts a price on the sun. The democratic
    rain falls on it, on them, on everyone.


Colliery Row


    That's it, with the bloke at number five,
    whose days are driving buses, nights The Crown.
    To watch him walking down the street at night's
    to forecast how his bus will be next day:
    if he's wobbling, then you'd best stay in the house,
    but if he's walking straight, you'll be okay.

    At number six? The terrace's Don Juan.
    At the first sign of sunshine he's half-naked
    on a deck chair out front with a beer can.
    His belly over his shorts is a landslide
    which traps for days a hillside family cottage,
    a school, a church, an entire alpine village,

    but no women. Not even her across the road,
    our lady on the other side of the curtains,
    who's been walking around beneath a cloud
    of dark hair since she watched her husband go.
    Her car is parked outside all summer, pointing
    away from here. She looks out through the window

    at skateboard kids, who run rings round my childhood,
    making ramps of bits of brick and wood,
    so they can take off, shake off this old street
    for an instant. They land outside number three,
    Jasmine Cottage, all Neighbourhood Watch,
    all No Parking Here Please and untouched

    daughters. The bloke at the other end of the row
    carried hods and now he's carrying
    his unemployment. In his garden grow
    For Sale signs. Today, he's out back, burning something –
    his smoke signals to neighbours translate,
    roughly, as Screw you! At number eight's

    the stately home of a terraced princess,
    whose fake tan really turns her into someone
    from somewhere else. She lets down her hair
    for a Friday night hero, an ear-pierced bloke,
    a handbrake magician, all mouth and sound system,
    whose car disappears in a puff of smoke.

    The terraced houses, semi-detached lives.
    What is a street for? Wind picks up, tonight,
    and a bus driver sways towards his home.
    The stars come out above Colliery Row,
    as far as stars from anywhere on earth.
    Look up at them now. Imagine living here.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from My Family and Other Superheroes by Jonathan Edwards. Copyright © 2014 Jonathan Edwards. Excerpted by permission of Poetry Wales Press Ltd..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

1

My Family in a Human Pyramid 9

Evel Knievel Jumps Over my Family 10

Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren in Crumlin for the Filming of Arabesque, June 1965 11

The Voice in which my Mother Read to Me 12

The Death of Doc Emmett Brown in Back to the Future 13

Half-time, Wales vs. Germany, Cardiff Arms Park, 1991 14

How to Renovate a Morris Minor 16

Bamp 17

Building my Grandfather 18

Lance Corporal Arthur Edwards (1900-1916) 19

My Uncle Walks to Work, 1962 20

2

Anatomy 23

View of Valleys Village from a Hill 24

View of Valleys High Street through a Café Window 25

Colliery Row 26

USA Family Kebab House, Merthyr Tydfil 28

Owen Jones 29

Raskolnikov in Ebbw Vale 30

X16 31

Chartist Mural, John Frost Square, Newport 32

Capel Celyn 33

In John F. Kennedy International Airport 34

FA Cup Winners on Open Top Bus Tour of my Village 36

3

Girl 39

Welsh National Costume 40

Us 41

The Doll 42

Decree Nisi 43

Jack-in-the-Box 44

The Bloke in the Coffee Shop 45

Aquafit 50

4

Bookcase Thrown through Third Floor Window 53

Restaurant where I am the Maître d' and the Chef is my Unconscious 54

Rilkc at War 55

Seal 56

The Hippo 57

Flamingos 58

Cheerleaders 59

Bouncers 60

Nun on a Bicycle 61

The Bloke Selling Talk Talk in the Arcade 62

Starbucks Name Tag Says Rhian 63

The Girls on the Make-up Counter 64

Karaoke 65

Brothers 66

The Boy with the Pump-action Water Pistol 67

The Performance 63

Holiday 70

On the Overpass 71

Acknowledgments 72