Ambrosia
Mark Mahemoff

Those late Sunday mornings
glitter amongst dross.
We'd both set off, father and son,
for snail cakes and rolls from our favourite bakery.
Then on to a delicatessen just across the road
whose owner's hooked nose
was a cartoonist's dream.
We'd buy cod roe and ambrosia cheese -
both of which smelled like unwashed socks -
and arrive back home to revel in excess,
laughing like a family where food and humour
were used as camouflage
in a war of unmet needs.

Mark Mahemoff's most recent book Near-Life Experience was published in 2002. His themes revolve around the city life and how relationships function within it. He is also interested in the possibilities of different forms such as pantoums, sestinas, found poems and hybrids. He wrote a poem which combined the pantoum and sestina forms which he called a sestoum. He is fascinated by the possibilities of constraint and what can be achieved within limitations. Mark also plays the drums in a band called Cartervance. His ideal would be to do what he loves yet afford to live. He is currently writing another book on an arts council grant.