Graham Clifford

CLOWN EGG REGISTER

When you were away for ten years
I read the books I thought you might have
and dreamed of you.
In the dream, you made me feel bad.

I visited the church where Grimaldi the clown
is buried, his trademark make-up design
captured on a hen’s egg
with two hundred others

Beato the tearful, Joey and all the Fratellinis
Cuckoo and Mr Mudge, Chunkie Russell,
Reverend Uncle Tacko
all one-tear or arched-eyebrow-unique.

This would suit you, the vicious business
of being a clown. If asked,
I would design your face as all white
the joke being none of this is funny.

Graham Clifford is a British author of five collections of poetry. His work has been chiseled led into paving slabs, translated into Romanian and German, can be found on the Poetry Archive, and is anthologised by publishers including Faber and Broken Sleep Books. Most recently his work has been included in the Manchester Review, Iamb and BerlinLit and is forthcoming in The Madrid Review, Finished Creatures and the Poetry Lighthouse. 

Graham said the following about his poem:

The Clown Egg Registry is such a rich and exotic thing I mostly wanted to simply share the fact of its existence. What I was also thinking of was Heinrich Böll's The Clown and a close, problematic friend. Pulling these elements together and balancing them was the work. So much space is taken up by stuff - weird clown names, explaining the church. They sit in the middle of the poem, like a nourishing yolk. Keeping with this metaphor, the narrative is the albumen surrounding.