Amy Rafferty

A lot to unpack

When I come, I will kiss you quite red and feed you till you are plump.
And if you are forward you shall see who is the stronger,
a gentle little girl who doesn’t eat enough or a big wild man. 
Sigmund Freud  

You dream Jay Rayner comes to the house
unannounced. Glowing in the moonlight
of your midnight door.
He is delicious and like the best of men
he brings you food.

He uses his fingers to feed you
grains of rice, one by one,
breadcrumbs,
tiny morsels of meat,
laid out pretty on a plate,
placed just so, to spell out your name

Impressive. Nevertheless,
first date nerves creep in
he reads your horoscope:
Pisces, throw the dice
in every game,
success and advancement
IS on its way – you don’t know what to say
so you sing twelve bars of a song
you think he might know and he snaps it up
and hums along, jazz-vague, while the moon slips
through windows, resting on walls, an arpeggio of light,
sweet shadows of sounds, flickering,
you wave a white flag, a handkerchief you stole
from his pocket, and listening through a storm
of canned laughter, you eat and you eat
and you never feel sick.

For dessert, he carries you around
on his back, while unseen crowds cheer.
You dig your bony little heels into his sides
urging him to go faster. Promising yourself
you will never tell anyone that
this is who you really are.
Sharing does not come naturally
and what we want the most
we should always keep to ourselves.

Amy Rafferty is a writer and photographer based in Glasgow. Her writing has been published in Magma, The North, Lallans, Contralytic, Abridged, Acumen, Envoi, Ink, Sweat and Tears and The Dark Horse. She studied under Donny O’Rourke and Kei Miller and was recently a recipient of the Clydebuilt Verse Apprenticeship Scheme. She collaborates with film makers, composers and musicians to create pieces of film and music with poetry at their core and is currently working towards her first collection

Amy said the following about her poem:

In poetry I love to examine the elements of ourselves we don’t find easy to share. There is freedom there, but still, I don’t know how to explain this poem without showing too much or getting myself in trouble, so I’ll just tell you I have a long standing crush on Jay Rayner and I enjoy writing about aspects of life that please me the most; food and music, and the exploration of psycho-sexual power dynamics within interpersonal relationships.

We're all of us, complex, simple creatures, all of us both deep and shallow.

I chanced upon the quote from Freud and I loved it. He sounds like a great night out.

It's from a love letter to his fiancée, and I loved the idea of the ‘gentle little girl’ reading it and giving the big man some side eye, ‘aye, we’ll see Sigmund, we will see.’