Miscarriage
–Jane Duran
Photo by Sharad Bhat on Unsplash
womb refused
Month: July 2019
heart of honeyed dark
A Dreaming Week
–Carol Ann DuffyNot tonight, I’m dreaming
in the heart of the honeyed dark
in a boat of a bed in the attic room
in a house on the edge of the park
where the wind in the big old trees
creaks like an ark.Not tomorrow, I’m dreaming
till dusk turns to dawn – dust, must,
most, moot, moon, mown, down –
with my hand over an open unread book,
a bird that’s never flown . . . distantly
the birdsong of a telephone.Not the following evening, I’m dreaming
in the monocle of the moon,
a sleeping S on the page of a bed
in the tome of a dim room, the rain
on the roof, rhyming there,
like the typed words of a poem.Not the night after that, I’m dreaming
till the stars are blue in the face
printing the news of their old light
with the ink of space,
yards and yards of black silk night
to cover my sleeping face.Not the next evening, I’m dreaming
in the crook of midnight’s arm
like a lover held by another
safe from harm, like a child
stilled by a mother, soft and warm,
twelve golden faraway bells for a charm.Not that night either, I’m dreaming
till the tides have come and gone
sighing over the frowning sand,
the whale’s lonely song
scored on wave after wave of water
all the wet night long.Not the last evening, I’m dreaming
under the stuttering clock,
under the covers, under closed eyes,
all colours fading to black,
the last of daylight hurrying
for a date with the glamorous dark.
the search party
The Search Party
–William Matthews
I wondered if the others felt
as heroic
and as safe: my unmangled family
slept while I slid uncertain feet ahead
behind my flashlight’s beam.
Stones, thick roots as twisted as
a ruined body,
what did I fear?
I hoped my batteries
had eight more lives
than the lost child.
I feared I’d find something.Reader, by now you must be sure
you know just where we are,
deep in symbolic woods.
Irony, self-accusation,
someone else’s suffering.
The search is that of art.You’re wrong, though it’s
an intelligent mistake.
There was a real lost child.
I don’t want to swaddle it
in metaphor.
I’m just a journalist
who can’t believe in objectivity.
I’m in these poems
because I’m in my life.
But I digress.
A man four volunteers
to the left of me
made the discovery.We circled in like waves
returning to the parent shock.
You’ve read this far, you might as well
have been there too. Your eyes accuse
me of false chase. Come off it,
you’re the one who thought it wouldn’t
matter what we found.
Though we came with lights
and tongues thick in our heads,
the issue was a human life.
The child was still
alive. Admit you’re glad.
Photo by Sebastian Unrau on Unsplash
what
What
–Stephen Dunn
What starts thingsare the accidents behind the eyes
touched off by, say, the missing cheekbone
of a woman who might have been beautifulit is thinking about
your transplanted life-line going places
in someone else’s palm, or the suicidal games
your mind plays with the edge
of old wounds, or something
you couldn’t share with your loverthere are no endings
people die between birthdays and go on for years;
what stops things for a moment
are the words you’ve found for the last bit of light
you think there is
Photo by Joanna Kosinska on Unsplash
the cloister
The Cloister
–William MatthewsThe last light of a July evening drained
into the streets below: My love and I had hard
things to say and hear, and we sat over
wine, faltering, picking our words carefully.The afternoon before I had lain across
my bed and my cat leapt up to lie
alongside me, purring and slowly
growing dozy. By this ritual I couldclear some clutter from my baroque brain.
And into that brief vacancy the image
of a horse cantered, coming straight to me,
and I knew it brought hard talk and hurtand fear. How did we do? A medium job,
which is well above average. But because
she had opened her heart to me as far
as she did, I saw her fierce privacy,like a gnarled, luxuriant tree all hung
with disappointments, and I knew
that to love her I must love the tree
and the nothing it cares for me.
Image (c) 2002 by Mitzi.humphrey used under CC BY-SA 4.0
means to an end
Means to an End
–Thomas Ligotti
Only one way
to arrive
(that swollen body)
yet so many ways
to leave.
You could spend
your whole life
counting those ways,
thinking about them.
But you can never
know the way
you will take
until it takes you.
It’s very strange,
that’s for sure.
Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash
“the lesson you’ve got…
–Mary Karr
…to learn is the someday you’ll someday
stagger to, blinking in cold light, all tears
shed, ready to poke your bovine head
in the yoke they’ve shaped.Everyone learns this. Born, everyone
breathes, pays tax, plants dead
and hurts galore. There’s grief enough
for each. My motherlearned by moving man to man,
outlived them all. The parched earth’s
bare (once she leaves it) of any who watched
the instants I trod it.Other than myself, of course.
I’ve made a study of bearing
and forbearance. Everyone does,
it turns out, and notethose faces passing by: Not one’s a god.
Photo by eberhard grossgasteiger on Unsplash
king size
Buying the King-Sized Bed
–Fleda Brown
Photo by Cezar Sampaio on Unsplash
past-lives therapy
Past-Lives Therapy
–Charles Simic
They explained to me the bloody bandages
On the floor in the maternity ward in Rochester, N.Y.,
Cured the backache I acquired bowing to my old master,
Made me stop putting thumbtacks round my bed.They showed me an officer on horseback,
Waving a saber next to a burning farmhouse
And a barefoot woman in a nightgown,
Throwing stones after him and calling him Lucifer.I was a straw-headed boy in patched overalls.
Come dark a chicken would roost in my hair.
Some even laid eggs as I played my ukulele
And my mother and father crossed themselves.Next, I saw myself inside an abandoned gas station
Constructing a spaceship out of a coffin,
Red traffic cone, cement mixer and ear warmers,
When a church lady fainted seeing me in my underwear.Some days, however, they opened door after door,
Always to a different room, and could not find me.
There’d be only a small squeak now and then,
As if a miner’s canary got caught in a mousetrap.
today was
Today I was happy, so I made this poem
–James Wright
As the plump squirrel scampers
across the roof of the corncrib,
the moon suddenly stands up in the darkness,
and I see that it is impossible to die.
Each moment of time is a mountain.
An eagle rejoices in the oak trees of heaven,
Crying,
This is what I wanted.
Photo by Ilnur Kalimullin on Unsplash