because what else were you supposed to dowait for her to check-in at the pearly gates just because she was your one cigarette per day that summer because she grinned like a slinkycould unbutton your jeans without breaking eye contact you’re supposed to wait – some sailor’sghost in your desk chair – the distant creeping…
Tag: Poem
Playing With Guns
I could never remember what had riled us uplike a nest of snakesshaking our rattles andsinking venom into tissue.Just the intensesensation of my ownblood, jackhammeringthrough my pulse points.We were born and bred for malice, tossed to the familial oubliette,taught to eagerly eradicatesoftness or axiom. Unexpectedly, you boltedabandoning our altercationin favour of the dark chambers offering…
Red Limbs
I see them coming from behind the layer of mesh glass being lead by a white coat to the table of pastels and crayons where us fuck ups scribble serenity onto a blank page. They’re not not my friends or family, it’s the emaciated late teen’s next to me, the one who’s too lost to…
Assessment Day
Sometimes I look from the classroomto the low grey building by the car park and remember I have photocopying to do so run down then run back before the class starts. Last week I got locked in the copier room. I rang security but no one answered.I could see the students gathering for the last…
An Instance of the Scientific Method
Find a pot of nail varnish: “ConfidentCoral”, by Jessica, perhaps. Fetchthe stainless steel nail scissors and walkbeneath the flying March shadows. Lie on the grass; adjust your scaleof focus to the miniscule. The cat, hull-downamong the crocuses, observes with mildinterest. Select and mark your snail. A scarlet shell-top will allow no laterconfusion of identity. Now…
How I Tried to Be Kind
a. I wanted to be kind but all I could achieve was cruelty. I wanted to be kind to the friend who had been dumped by a guy she thought she would marry and grow old with, only to realize all he wanted from her was sex; I acted concerned and hugged my friend and…
My Voyage on the Anti-Titanic
He is one hundred years full of Atlantic cold water,He twists inside currents revelations of ice,He soft kisses facefirst the bulkheads of wetrustThe slowdance of years in the blackness of space. A waterlogged astronaut face dark with eyerotHe is bones only connected by an idea of lifeHe doesn’t have ears to register first creakingsOf the…
The Inhabited Shell
In display tanks lit an impossible blue, divers give tentative thumbs-up,dogfish are stroked and fed.On the bench, a couple hissing in Italian,cast their tanned arms again and again into the gloom.Suddenly, a gasp of English –What do you want?That.She spits and points at my heavy bump,then rises, heels treacherous on the stairs.He whispers an apology…
Hampshire Saddleback
When he was done arguing he went to the barn, he had a wrenchcrooked under his left arm.(He’d been fixing the tractorbefore the fight began).The sow shuffled, idle in her stall.He paused a moment, he put his wife’sface on the sow and the sow’sface on his wife.When he was done beatinghe scooped the sausage meat…
What You Need to Know About Your Caesarean Section
Turning the pamphlet’s well-worn and underlined pages,in the soft green waiting room,comparing bellies; yours ripe and ready,mine a dream-filled pillow. Choosing the one, that was hard,the right one, my ideal other,the right hair, right eyes.Everything must be perfect for baby, The plan meticulous,your home towna twenty-five minute drive,just over the state line. Our meeting “Hey,…