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Crawling
By Bobby Parker

Lately I’ve spent too much time
thinking about not thinking –
the emptiness of a doll’s eye.
Loneliness turned inside out
like a black jacket.
I look at the grass.
Long, dark, wet, graveyard grass.
I remind myself
to come back one day
and read the headstones.
I stamp in muddy puddles,
brown specks land on my lip –
I can’t explain but I think
you make me walk through here
to meet you because I’m so afraid.
Passing headlights undress you
on your corner opposite the angels.

 

What my death will mean to me and my wife
By Reid Bush

Partly it will mean that
I won’t get up at night
and dig through the frig
and cupboard till I find
cheese and crackers—and
maybe pickles—and sit
down at a scarred oak table
to chew and stare at Night
Filling A Kitchen Window—

which, in turn, will mean that
my wife won’t get up, won’t
slip her robe on over her gown,
won’t enter the kitchen pulling
tighter its belt, won’t sit down,
won’t ask—as she always does—
if maybe I wouldn’t also like
some milk.

 

Out of sync
By Ayelet McKenzie

She gives him vodka kisses
he drinks in her geranium mouth,
wide and slack
like an overstretched elastic band.
Together they turn the day upside down,
feeding each other trifle from teaspoons
in the small hours,
dancing the tango neck to neck
laughing at the moon.

 

Dummy
By Claire Quigley

I want a voodoo doll
of me: a twin in hessian.

I want her here, not
in an attic somewhere,

mirroring the dead. I want her
sent to me, lines blurring

in a chrysalis.
I want to watch

her eight-part body twist
and click into my shape.

I want to run the pins in,
flinching in her silence.

I want to hold her,
hip to hip, and feel

my traitor’s arms
around her.

___________

Many more poems for you to read in our 100th issue celebratory edition...

 

Follow the links below for a taster of the great reads waiting for you in our special 100th anniversary celebratory edition. You can buy it right now by clicking HERE or better still, take out a subscription online at our subscription page. Don't forget our specially discounted rates for two or three year subscriptions. LITTLE BUNKAR - Adam Hays ROSIE - R.S.Mann BABY ALAN - Juliet West THE CROCODILE HOUSE - Emma Seaman 100th Issue Front Page CONTRIBUTORS A-Z

 

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