I. Recruits
You can’t go wrong. Right next to the
café you’ll see a girl with a basket.
You’ll both follow the policeman. At the
right moment, she’ll hand you a revolver.
Tartan-print bowling bag.
(White loose-sleeved
blouse, dark high-waisted
polka dot skirt.
Pearls around neck.)
Airport
Wicker basket bag.
(light striped button-down
blouse, dark cardigan
casually thrown over
the shoulders.)
Café
Dark drawstring beach bag,
scarf casually hanging from
the open. (Sleeveless
top, relaxed slacks, bleached
short wavy hair.)
Milk bar
II. Natural Sack
collared, a patch of it
implied, a hand stitch, unconfirmed
also: oats
‘seeds, roots’
a bone hold
‘sprouts, shoots’
bundled up
neat snap
Brown snakeskin
in my arms, still: ‘leaves, nuts’
‘berries, fruits’
fawned, scrapped away
my belly gaped
‘grains, bugs’
III. Birkin Basket
A cavern of ‘molluscs,
netting birds’
flunk a tithe
and allodial myths
‘fish’ and across
the hall: ‘rats’
‘rabbits’ or a Suffolk hare
‘tuskless
small fry’
or we suffer here
cloaked, carve-ready
forge a plucked form
a south field (measure
at spinners)
latus fundus
silver beaded minaudieré
Alexa Chung’s Jane Birkin basket vs Algerian
FLN soldier’s revolver basket
‘how we wrested the wild
oats from their husks’
NOTES
Opening quote, descriptions of three women and screenshots are from The Battle of Algiers (1966, dir. Gillo Pontecorvo)
‘seeds, roots, …’ from Ursula K. Le Guin’s ‘Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction’
‘Alexa Chung Learns How to Dress the French Way’