Writing Feature

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Nobody Wants A Happy Poem by

Nobody wants to know about the summer I turned sixteen,
and the heatwave that left us lying in long grass
like straw,
in heaven, in paradise,
burning.

And nobody wants to know about last Christmas,
and the way the sky looks at four in the morning,
when you're in love.

And nobody wants to know what happened on the night
I named as my memorable date for my bank account.
So if all anybody wants is gloom,
I'll keep that as a secret.   

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Knot Work by

This blood winds through us in runic rivers
winding itself like the knot work
our fathers carved with heavy blades
on the eves of summer war.
The same tumbling journey
we march, following paths smoothed
by our thousand feet
in the verdant glens at Tara.

The song - we know it so well,
but we have lost the words
they  sang in that long ago; splintered,
we meander amidst the green, stumbling
on each other like notes
in the whiskey-wrote symphony.
The knot loosens.

But
there is no straight knot; the blood
that feeds us knows its course,
through canyon and vale.

We are the notes of this long-hummed melody,
half remembered nouns and verbs spiraling on our tongues,
off one another.
This ballad belongs to us, in the same
way our hair becomes our own, sprouting
from scalps in single strands, braiding
into chords thick - like blood -
flowing free and singing.
Strings of melodious notes are thick, too.
We must each sing
the parts we recall, from days
when our warriors stalked bloody fields and bred
themselves into us.

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If You Are A Lie, I Am A Liar by

You're not here, but I am still
there on the floor of your hands,
twitching ribs and eyelids. My body is
a temple, oh Samson don't
pull it down.

I slept in
your brother's room, swimming with his battleships
and the muzzles of submarines and
model planes. I was a model prisoner;
made my bed,
melted out of pajamas and
into jeans,
ate your mother's baby plums
before they went off.

When we left, I ducked my head,
same head
which adorned and adored your lap,
smiled or bewilderedly backed away. Confused, cute
and giant-eyed. With your
mouth on my face,
I was perfectly still and
perfectly paralysed — you claim now
not to have noticed.

You did not cross me
or offend or possess me. At 4:06 you suddenly felt
that I should go. I was a graceful
loser, yielded beneath your
sudden upper hand — and
I wore my heart
in my beating, honeybee mouth,
I went to bed with harps and guns
ringing in my ears.

Is it just that my smooth
tabernacle shoulder
couldn't hold you longer?
Is it just that
I am not used to the taste?

I'm not there, but you are still
painted over my eyebrows and chin,
some kind of invasion —
but my body is a temple, oh
Samson don't.


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the gardener by

my mouth is
pregnant
with words
that you
seeded in
my heart.

carefully,
you have
tended to your
garden

daily

with earthy
warm hugs,
cool after-sex
showers, and
nutritious late night
conversations.

all for...

one moment, miraculous

a groaned pronoun
breaks the
reluctant surface
of my lips...

...I...

and once the sac
is broken
the verb
easily flows
like an uncurling
newborn leaf...

...love...

and all your
hopes and dreams
will come true
knowing that
the roots
of your noun...

...you...

is firmly
planted in my
heart.

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Scatter by

S c a  tt e re   d   b ea   d       s
across hardwood floors
S-t-r-i-n-g them together
One-two-three
Precious, pre
carious

F
a
  l
   l
again

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