In December 1650, Thomas Willis and William Perry were surprised to discover that the felon whose corpse they had claimed for dissection in Petty’s rooms on Oxford’s High Street could be resuscitated. / They are, all three, still: / She lies prone on the dining table / Her throat livid where the rope has cut. / Neither Mr Petty nor Willis is ready to approach her / Though they’ve laid their pamphlets, diagrams out / As if she’s something they’ll assemble together. / A clock chimes in the city’s chilly night – / Petty approaches her, his scalpel held out straight, / As though she – Nan, who swung for her child – / Might rise and fight. / Willis flicks a pamphlet page flat, / Looks at the cross-hatched chambers of lungs / Where arrows and Latin signal spaces they will never see / Unless they do so now. / He sighs and thinks of boyhood games, / Rumours of women’s hidden spaces, / Of his mother’s body, safe in her long gown. / Petty shouts – he is beside Nan, / Clamps his mouth to her face, tilts her head – / Willis gasps, shocked at his friend’s low goal – / But the woman gives a throaty chuckle-cough – / Willis’s breath catches in his throat – a sob – / Petty’s scalpel falls – tactful Willis will later kick it out of sight – / But now, just now, they stand staring / In the grip of an ungentlemanly disappointment / At what this woman has done.

She learnt, slowly, to ignore the bulbs / which rolled, unannounced, out of newspaper / the bare pots leaving watermarks / specks of dirt on sills / compost gnats jostling at the larder window / and instead, to accommodate / his voice in sleep murmuring Latin / straight from Rennie’s Botany / -radix, axil, caudex- / rare words for plants’ secret places / while his hands traced her veins / soil under his nails / the gentle query of his touch, then / a bloom brightening in the weak light. / She thrilled to the secret joy of it- / his smell, always, of pencil sharpenings, moss, / his kind face in concentration like a boy’s. / He knew when to wait, to hold or to halt- / when dormancy could, again, be quickened into life.

This way, girls! / Miss Jones waves her umbrella / on the way to the Tube - it is / 1989, after the British Museum / your head full of smooth marble, / David, Dido, the Bloomsbury set / then in the crush of the carriage / you feel a nudge, behind / against your buttocks / towards a place you have no name for / (no name you'd say aloud, at least) / a nudge, again, as though the man / behind you carries shopping oddly, / at hip height - / - you try a half smile / that silly me half smile / your mother has / and half turn  / Miss Jones making room beside her / as she catches your eye.

A blood pin-prick splayed between glass / He leans towards it, breath licked in tight / Mr Hutton drones on / The latent smell of gas from boys and Bunsens / 9A muttering / A disco, cigarettes, crisps / He sinks his eye into the cradling cup of the lens / Line of sight straitened to these crimson whorls / An enigma, code, map. / Lucas next to him chews and shuffles / He only likes Science with burning tapers and sudden bangs / Peaceful as snowflakes / The blood sits, a silent stain / At home, his mum tries to cheat the meter / Smoothes her slip / Uncle Ted lets the back door click shut. / The blood speckles and flowers / Like a crime scene in miniature / He pictures his outline chalked on the ground / Like on TV / A sketch of a boy, mid-flight.

1. Someone missing from group / I would put you – there – / in the plastic chair at the bedside / where your warm voice would marvel / at her tiny hands / her heart’s insistent beat. /   / 2. Wrong composition of group / All that day I wished you nearer – / your body a match I wanted to light / I watched your paint-stained fingers / work the corkscrew, swirl / dark red wine into a thin glass. /   / 3. Group too far away / There they are, my family – / fading like a hymn’s last refrain / while dust motes speckle down shafts of light. / As I see them back away, I / don’t know whether to wave, or follow.