I think of those who sat here before me,
Drinking overpriced tea in an overpriced seat;
Trying not to feel miffed at £2.20 for a teabag and hot water,
But this frivolous life is one that is growing on me,
The art of not caring becomes all too natural
As I sit by the door and think about leaving
But not leaving.
Continue reading
Death is sleeping
beneath the surface of the water.
She is alive with insects,
moss flowering over her wings.
Little black bat, submerged in formaldehyde,
leather-skinned old woman–
don’t wake just yet. Continue reading
I woke the night it finally rained
With a desire to take myself outside and lie down
Among all the broken spines of estranged grass
Baked dry by this new breed of summer sun Continue reading
For the village of strong women that raised me. I am indebted, always.
I will always need another body to follow through the fog
another voice to cut through the darkness
a thousand more tongues to set alight when our syllables
become knives
more fingernails to watch collect ink and stone as they claw their way home Continue reading
I want to shake her
when she surfaces, coughing,
my whole body shakes
when she dives again
exhaling yes like they will give her breath
I say no as if I could slow her fall. Continue reading
Do you think she stands there just because she can;
To feel the pulling wind of soon arriving trains
Balancing the tightrope of the platforms edge
As she sways to the echoed vibrations?
A two hundred and fifty year old bridge
gone. Destroyed in a winter’s afternoon,
by the torrent pouring off from the ridge,
the lake rising rapidly in the monsoon,
I dread the poem I shall one day write
To read to those who knew you, knew your heart,
The kindness of your soul.
Its rhymes are phantoms in my mind;
is not a period
but it’s funny how the homograph is used in this way—to shut things down, as a period (.) is the end of a sentence, the shut down of conversation, a period as it seems to be also does this too whenever a girl has one,
Some days I think I might have been a witch.
I have the temperament for one – brooding, meticulous,
able to whip up a potion as easily as winking
in the rusted cauldron that hangs over my firepit,
chattering in the background like an old housewife.
They’d come to my cottage (of course it would be a cottage)
and track mud all over my freshly scrubbed floors
and ask me to fix any number of ills.
