The Alligator Girls (a poem by W. S. Graham)

The Alligator Girls

Are you to tell me where my soul is cast
Or in an alligator or a god.

Or would you like to bring the girls at ransom
Over to have a picnic beside the sweet
Clear water. This is the very day for it.
Bring your apricot brandy over. Tell the girls
The mill is off and to come on over
And we’ll all put our toes in the sweet river.

An afternoon by the river with two sisters
Is something special. We shouted Gator Gator
And out came May and Bonnie lifting their skirts
Prancing with mock terror out of the shallows
To lovingly berate us. That was when
I worked in America as a young man.

I am told the river had alligators in it.
May and Bonnie are grown up and dead.
But we had some great fun, didn’t we?

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13 Comments

Filed under Poems

13 responses to “The Alligator Girls (a poem by W. S. Graham)

  1. claire2

    Mmm. Love this Brendano. Very sensual and nostalgic.
    Put them up on MyT! I’m beginnig to feel like the lone poetry fiend these days! 😉

  2. Thanks, Claire. Yes, I like it very much too. I did post it on MyT once, but at the moment I can’t really post anything on MyT as it won’t format and would come out as one long line (very Joycean!). 🙂

  3. claire2

    that’s strange! Maybe you should email the moderators or something.
    I’ve been thinking about what you said about setting up a blog. A level students leave next week; I have a license to live again!
    Which post was the link on again?

  4. jaimeatdnmyt

    I’ll try to post the poem on MyT for you, Brendano.

  5. jaimeatdnmyt

    It’s posted at the MyT Creative Writing blog.

  6. Thanks, Jaime … that was kind of you. 🙂

  7. claire2

    Hello Brendano; shit…I see my blog’s out there! All I did was click on that link! I will have to write something vaguely, er, constructive then!
    At least I can log in to WordPress there now. I couldn’t find a place to log in here to post comments so kept going back to DNMT…

  8. Hello, Claire … think of the link as a gentle push in the right direction. 🙂

  9. claire2

    okay! Right will stop messing and tidy house. ANd think of summat half decent to write! 😉

  10. No bother to you, Claire (as we say here). 🙂

  11. claire2

    Morning Brendano! Still haven’t put a blog up! Am going away so will think of one for Monday. Procrastination, that’s me… 🙂

  12. Yes, the thrill and the love and the fun and the connection … the joy of being alive.

    I like the wistfulness of the last line.

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