Alan Morrison 

St. Vitus’ Dance
for my mother, Helen

(from forthcoming volume, Saints with Cluttered Brows)

Once she was able to say Yes –
could mouth life’s affirmation without
a quiver of doubt –
now she spills just Yawf, yawf, yawf –
pale shape to reassure itself,
mantra for thought-cushioning – Yawf:
spell to ward off thorny worrying;
sped up, Professor Yaffle’s patter:
Yaff, yaff, yaff – in sticking time’s
stylus-scratch trips out as… Yawf…

Sometimes this stifled Yes is paired
with Yawfit, yawbit, bobbit, boppit –
Tolkien-fangled tongue, to say

Stop it – That’s it – Hoppit – Hobbit…
(she called me Poppet as a boy)
grips her face in paroxysms,
bit-lip spit pronunciations…

Half-swallowed vowels lodge in her throat –
semi-digested consonants crowd
in contorting twitches, facial clenches,
jaw clamped in Bruxism’s vise.

Mind flashes cold photos of cavities,
unambiguously black, vital grey membranes
eaten away, basal ganglia ravaged
to rotten cauliflower by Huntington’s chorea,
for want of a brain protein, huntintin,
parroting its tripping symptom.

Vocal cords recapture elocution
schooled her young clipped actress
groomed from aspiring council stables
a yawning age ago;
now she’s tutored in smudged speech
seeded in degenerative genes –
a slur of lines, pre-rehearsed parlance
for clunking curtain call, retched theatrical;
her gait, no more days gone adagio
trapped in St. Vitus’ skipping dance.
 
[Note: St. Vitus’ Dance is another name for Huntington’s Disease, a degenerative genetic brain illness which gradually debilitates the sufferer both physically and mentally; the ‘Dance’ refers to the strange skipping movements made by HD sufferers when walking, due to degeneration of the motor functions].

Alan Morrison's first full collection, The Mansion Gardens, was published by Paula Brown, in 2006. His forthcoming collection, Saints with Cluttered Brows, will be published by Waterloo in 2008.