Terms and Conditions

Tania Hershman

• Publisher: Nine Arches Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781911027355
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Tania Hershman's debut poetry collection, Terms and Conditions, urges us to consider all the possibilities, and to read life's small print before signing on the dotted line. These measured poems bring their stoical approach to the uncertain business of our daily lives – and ask us to consider what could happen if we were to bend or break the rules, step beyond the boundaries and challenge the narrative. In feats of imagination and leaps of probability, falling simply becomes flying, a baby sagely collects data, and even the evidence often leads us astray. In between this, Hershman's precise poetry elegantly balances the known, unknown and unknowable matter of existence, love and happiness, weighing the atoms of each, finding just the exact words that will draw up the perfect contract of ideas.

iii. privacy policy

Missing you

The woman in her twenties

is amazed she’s an anomaly. She’s

doing fine – if fine means living,

breathing, getting married, having

children – without the chunk

that in us normals holds half

of all our neurons. Her brain,

the jaw-dropped doctors think,

became expert in alternatives,

workarounds, diversions. Who’s to say

she’s not finer than the rest

of us? Our signals

take no chances, walk

the roads most travelled by, while hers,

double-jointed,

are dancing.

Surplus, 1919

And what if you assembled them

in some giant stadium, all two million

and announced: We’re very sorry

but there’s no-one left

to marry you. Would there be outcry

demands for explanation, Why

did you send them? Thousands

upon thousands, and when they were gone

you dispatched reinforcements. Would they

charge the stage, commandeer the microphone, pitch you

to the crowds? Or sit, stunned, wondering

how now to live: alone

or worse, with parents; how

to earn, with what to occupy

those hours emptied of expected

spouse and children. And would they

still be sitting there, all two million

when you, impatient, having said

your piece, turn off

the lights, leave,

go home to your wife.

Beneath the cow

Beneath the cow, far far down, from the field behind and another thousand feet: a tunnel, made by men, to blow up other men. Beneath the cow, now so peaceful, now busy grazing, they ploughed through Belgian clay – during the dig, eleven perish, trapped, the twelfth surviving for six days to emerge, walk away from his grave, already dug.

And all this for what? A line of craters, now water-filled, lakes and pools, and inside these now one-hundred-year-old holes, alterations in Earth’s geography, and history, their creators, tunnellers and sappers, heard for days afterwards their enemy crying. Men, buried, dying.

After seeing Monet’s Waterlilies and then hearing the news

I save a set of pores

for sadness (it’s viscous,

sags the skin if you don’t specify).

Usually I empty once a month,

or maybe

fortnightly

but now it’s so much I can’t keep up it spills into adjacent zones

where the walls are flimsy flooding is a real threat. I try

to activate the Emergency Heart Fence

but the button’s stuck, instructions

shredded years ago. If you know how

to bail out, reinforce and stabilise

please call.

What is it that fills us

A song for the last of the gasometers

They first suggested relocation. They did this out of love, wanting to avoid dismantlement, demolition. All but one agreed; the final one said:

– Not without my gas.

They went away, drew up plans and schemas, investigated pressure, volume, temperature. They did this out of love...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• i. data collection
• ii. warranties & disclaimers
• iii. privacy policy
• Notes
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author & this book