Three Poems
Daddy
I imagine her pushing
your child from her womb;
you melting pride and nothing
really changing. She will
raise a brood--grow flabby;
chase every phone call,
and random claim of paternity
away from her waking thoughts.
Dwelling in egg-shelled denial,
you will crack under becoming
your father in the late night,
taking what's yours; drunken
bursts regurgitating childhood.
Imagining this; I breathe relief.
Merman
With apologies to T. S. Eliot
You sleep, yet still breathe sea; the curl of surf
slips into your mouth, returns to the shore
of your lips. Crusted with salt, the brine
in cracks of skin that was once scales.
You heard a siren; I played my part,
tempting you from the sea and now,
all we hear is the loss of crashing bodies
on the cliff-edge of wrecked conscience.
When you wake, all that's left is the memory
and sound pounding through bloodied veins
where the ocean once ran. Your fragments;
shored against the ruins of your frame.
Prayer
We peek through heavy curtains;
children hunting Santa, fingers trailing
the panes, watching the streetlights
manipulate the view. The depth,
breadth of every flake, binds
like candyfloss to leafless limbs.
We sigh another prayer for the world,
to hold itself in the crack of arctic knuckles,
to have another day in each others' hands.
Sonia Hendy-Isaac recently graduated with an MA in Creative & Critical Writing; she is now completing her PhD. Her poetry has been widely published in journals; her most recent work can be found in Snakeskin, The Shit Creek Review, Qarrtsiluni & Equinox. Her debut collection, Flesh, is due later this year and she is also an editor for Iota.