Pen Kease

Care

Now, two years on I’m given the records:
FOUND ON FLOOR AT 05:20
THEN AGAIN AT SEVEN.
FOUND ON THE FLOOR 13:00,
AT 17:00, THEN, 17:20
AT 05:00 THEY FOUND HIM
TRYING TO GET OUT OF BED.
AT 05:42 THEY FOUND HIM
KNEELING ON THE BED,
LEANING HEADFIRST
OVER THE BEDRAILS.
THEY REASSURED HIM,
AND HE WAS ABLE TO LIE DOWN
AGAIN. AT 12:00,
HE WENT TO THE TOILET
BY HIMSELF,
AT 19:00 HE WALKED
TO TOILET BY HIMSELF
AGAIN, AND THEY ASSISTED
HIM BACK TO BED.
AT 23:00 HE WAS FOUND
ON FLOOR.
AT 05:00, IN AN ATTEMPT
TO GO BACK TO BED,
HE SLIPPED DOWN.
THEY HELPED HIM
BACK TO BED.
AT 16:00 HE SAT ON THE EDGE
OF THE BED TRYING
TO GET UP, THEN WAS FOUND
ON THE FLOOR
AT 17:00, AGAIN AT 17:20. AT 19:00
HE TRIED
TO PUT HIMSELF
ONTO THE COMMODE
AND SLIPPED ONTO FLOOR.
We’d watched them help.
They’d hauled him back to bed,
dragging him between them,
the one with the sharp face
and pencilled eyebrows
and the disgusted one
who smelled of grease.
Hup-one-two-three,
hup-one-two-three,
c’mon old soldier, they said.

Pen Kease (b. 1951 in Camborne, Cornwall) holds a BA in Creative Writing and Humanities from the Open University, and an MA in Writing from the University of Warwick. Her poems, which are documentary in nature, explore the ways in which society categorises us, using both formal, and casual snobberies to do so. Much of her writing is the result of delving into her own working-class background of family myth, and placing these into historical (and by the act of writing, contemporary) context. Her poems have been previously published in: The Interpreter’s House, Prole Magazine, Algebra of Owls, Emergency Verse – Poetry in Defence of the Welfare State (Caparison), and her flash fiction was recently shortlisted in the Bridport Prize.

Pen Kease

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