States of Poetry Poems
In black chalk the beast
brusques forward Silence Rubens
has stopped his mouth
with a single line He is already
awed by the den
he will find himself in even now
as his mane curls into wisp
of emptiness A study on paper
But there in white chalk the grim
pose brightens
into ...
The grass grows longer on the easeway.
A pelican swipes the sky
towards the seascape we can't yet see,
its webby legs outstretched:
& ...
Perhaps the best cells are the ones we can't kill off,
a persistence of the fittest, although mutation's
always painful. It's two thousand and fourteen,
and I know no-one who has been
uninjured. It thinks in me,
this shadow. I put on sunscreen, and am surprised
to come in contact with my skin.
In the same day, I'm chatted up in a café
by an aspiring nove ...
for Ian
And suddenly:
the men
are holding beers
and standing round
the trampoline,
and not the barbecue;
turning over toddlers,
instead of steaks.
The women
make the salads.
Fiona Wright