Tag: poetry (Page 4 of 24)

Dew

April 22, 2018 / writersamr / 0 Comments

The day smells like yellow with a hint of blue
and you look like petrichor –
a little misty around the edges
a haze following you

and who am I, I ask,
now the whisky has stopped
obstructing my view

who are we, in this fresh
morning with dew on our lips,
beads of it at the ends of our hair

and who will we turn into after
noon, when the sun is burning loudly
when our eyes can’t block out the noise
and my hands still smell like your voice

I breathe you in
and wonder if your mouth still
feels like how I looked the night before
spongey with alcohol and thirst
stretched with smiles and open, wild
tongue trying to dampen the fuzzy inside
of your cheek, like dew trying to reach
a dandelion seed

April 16, 2018 / writersamr / 0 Comments

authorial intent

March 24, 2018 / writersamr / 0 Comments

when did you start loving me?
can you pinpoint the exact day
and time, the particular thing I
did to make you look at me
differently? I want to know
exactly what it felt like then,
exactly what it feels like now
that it is familiar, now that it
is normal. Show me how you
see me and we will compare
notes – reader interpretation
versus authorial intent.

If In Doubt

March 12, 2018 / writersamr / 0 Comments

If in doubt, grasp all of your words:
Close your eyes.
Reach into the lucky dip bag of vocab
like a child fishing for sweets.
Feel for the ones that best fit the palm of your hand,
the ones that mould to the hills of your knuckles,
that give way to the swirls of your fingertips without
leaving sticky residue on them.
Squeeze the words, with their hollow vowels and
crunchy consonants. Don’t crush them. Test them to see
which ones are hard, which ones will have the most impact,
which ones will bounce and which will fall flat.
Pull out those words and throw them
in the direction of your target. The page, the
cat, your mother. The armed robber in the bank with the
hostages. Make sure you get the delivery just right –
a gentle underarm toss or a heaving thrust for
those targets who are harder to reach. Let the words fly
and pray the good ones stick –
else be ready to flee for safety when it backfires, or to
work your arm until it’s sore and your message is received.

Lashings of Ginger Beer

March 11, 2018 / writersamr / 0 Comments

I still have last night’s smell on my hands:
the fruitiness of my perfume;
the remnants of a spicy ginger beer cocktail;
a glass full of limes;
a whiskey I can never remember the name of;
burnt, sweet, sticky marshmallows;
warmth and comfort and heat and ease –
so much ease.

be with me / to be with me

March 3, 2018 / writersamr / 0 Comments

I just found two poems I wrote, two and a half years apart, about two different people, and they fit together perfectly, and have almost the same title with only one word different. How very odd. It’s like one poem answers another; one person answers a call that they didn’t hear at the time and that wasn’t intended for them, yet still they appeared.

Another Dream

February 21, 2018 / writersamr / 0 Comments

Another dream is dressing,
preparing for her entrance.
I hope she is good. I have
not paid for a ticket but
I have rights. The curtain
twitches and the lights
dim. I hope the dream is
in her best dress. Something
gold and glittery, hip-hugging,
trailing down to the floor as
the dream sways like she is
about to walk onto the red
carpet. Maybe her hair will
be wavy and flowing, topped
with a tiara. Stilettos lifting
the dream a little, making her
walk taller and stand straighter,
proud and excited to perform.

Sitting in the front row of the
theatre by myself, I am underdressed
in my pyjamas, but I am an
eager audience – stripy blue
and white bottoms and even
though it’s February now, a long-
sleeved top with Rudolph’s
face on it and a gimmicky
pink ball for a nose, which
strangely sticks out not far
from where my stoma used
to be. I am comfortable yet
vulnerable. I urge the dream
not to read my thoughts, not
to think about the day just gone
or the day about to ascend. I ask
her to perform a work of fiction,
to sing a happy, upbeat song
I won’t want to wake up from.
I pray for a play that strays
from my normal viewing –
that strays from dead relatives,
from haunted houses, from
familiar fears, from realism. The
curtains open and I see the silhouette
of the dream walk to the microphone.
I clap, my hands hollow and echoing
in my private purgatory. The
spotlight shines on her, and she begins.

Publication Announcement – In Between Hangovers

February 10, 2018 / writersamr / 0 Comments

I’m excited to have three poems accepted for online zine In Between Hangovers. One is already up on the website, and two others are forthcoming! This poem, “Superheroes”, is one I wrote for another publication but it got rejected. I was going to put it on my website but decided that I really liked it and maybe someone else would like it enough to publish it, too. I’m glad I put it back out into the wild! Here it is – Superheroes at In Between Hangovers.