60. Eleanor Cantor

Musician, poet and writer of short stories.

Eleanor Cantor is a lifelong musical performer and half of the duo Sister Chain & Brother John.

Her poems and short stories have been published in various international magazines and anthologies, and she is a 2024 winner of the Ellie J Shakerley Poetry Award.

After many years in Berlin, she settled in Sheffield in 2020 and now enjoys exploring the Peak District and beautiful Derbyshire countryside. However, her poems continue to focus on human nature and mental landscapes.

Eleanor is a member of the Creative Writing Group Berlin and the Poets of Esnoid in Yorkshire. She appreciates the mutual support and inspiration found in writers’ communities.

Poems

Advice
The Crusader
Richard Ringer
Angel of Suburbia 1983
Talisman
Protocol

Advice

Standing at the duty-free shop 
with a dad who didn’t care 
on our final holiday together 
I ask him to recommend a bottle of whisky, 
“for who?” 
“a friend” 
“If it’s a good friend, then this one’s best,” 
he regally points to a smoky 12-year-old single malt 
that’s way above the budget of an English major, 
and does not offer to add it to his cart. 
Nor do I ask. 

I bring the fancy bottle in a cab 
tracing the embossment to avoid the driver
and try not to make a big deal of it, 
but place it nonchalant by the CD rack 
of a man who didn’t care about me 
and he drinks half of it that night, 
the other half with someone else a weekend later. 

& the smoke washes off in the laundry  
the taste of malted disappointment lingers…fades…
& 12 years on 
I’ve wonderfully matured
and single. 

<<< 

The Crusader

When he fell,
her father carried back his heart
in a metal case for her
along with the plate he had stolen
from the Holy Land.
The letter in which he had cancelled their
engagement was lost,
and so his memory was left unharmed.
She cried by the heart and the plate,
which were both fitted into the castle’s gate,
and kept asking what it was…the different shapes and letters
She wanted to know everything he might have known.
Her father explained what he could,
but he knew little of that distant culture.
Her dejection worried him,
yet he felt cruel when implying
her mourning was excessive
And so he went on comforting
the forever crying princess
by the plate and the heart.

<<<

Richard Ringer

You said: “Let’s get together for 
dinner and I don’t mean the 
New York ‘let’s get together’ 
I mean really ‘let’s get together’
Give me your number 
I want to cook for you guys
I’m from Ohio, me and her are”. 
She said: “yes, we mean it, come to dinner.”

You grilled for us outside your 
Brooklyn brownstone as if it was a front
lawn. The fire kept going out 
no matter how much fuel you poured 
and in the end, everything, everything tasted 
of gasoline. The meat, the corn, the veg. 
We got high on 
gasoline, we burped gasoline 
We licked our plates clean of gasoline 

We talked of our show 
We talked of your show 
Of our upbringing: Catholic, Atheist, Jew, JW
(all parents make mistakes) 
of puppies and of horror films; 
Does Richard Ringer like “The Ring”? 
 
We kept in a touch, for a 
while. 
I saw 
you have a child now. Not with her.
We have two. 
You’re still in skinny jeans 
screaming your head off 
As it happens - so are we 
Let’s get together again 

and burn stuff. 

<<<

Angel of Suburbia 1983

After “Descent” - Painting by Finnian Clark

You might not think of “swagger” 
when you think of angels 
but of grace and holy 
stuff: unearthly eery things 
but that Angel 
who came to my terrace that night 
as big and as golden as Shwedagon temple
and made my parents shut up 
and blew up the school 
and took me to see the stars 
and made stars ask for my autograph 
and when I showed him my scars 
said: “what scars?” and 
shrugged for me the smooth skin 
of a teenage seal 
and before he left 
placed his giant palms 
on my shoulders – two 
big yellow California suns
and said that what was 
definitely WILL NOT 
ever shall be 
That angel – he had swagger
and I’ve been flying on it,
soaring
ever since. 

<<<

Talisman

Courageous, set forth – fork it! 
apron silence begging 
for his walking stick to stick once and for all. 

He walked to the Isle of Wight – 
Celebrated. 

“Old man always did what he wanted”
Not a toss given to the cost shriveling in the rags of 
the end of the century before last. 

Yarn ancestors – men barking, men up and left me
men three families, women finding out on the bus 
with pursed photographs
“that’s my Owen that is!” 
“that can’t be!” 

Now great granddaughters 
Table duties for the do
“You big baby!” She shrieks as
he jumps up and down 
on their mini outside
St. Vinnie’s hall 

Belly rise belly falls, belch belch 

We lasses ageing chickens bleeding feathers 
In the crazed despair for mating in the slaughterhouse

How come anyone would do?

 
<<<

Protocol

It has been a week I have been sleeping in my office.

Nobody knows apart from the guards, if they have noticed.

The workday begins at 8.30, and I am first at work.

I have my own office which no one enters unauthorized.

I could have easily taken a hotel room, but I do not wish to.

As long as I am in the office, business is as usual.

Last Thursday: returned from work early, from a meeting, just to check, and – how banal – a strange man in my home.

Without words, I took out my second briefcase, filled it with shaving kit and change of clothes and returned to the office – the last place in which I’d been happy, and since then I have been here.

I worked that day until the last of the employees left, and could not decide where to go.
A city hotel?
A friend?

I feel that as long as I am here my life is as it was.

<<<