I’m a Silver Brancher!

I’m really honoured and delighted and thrilled to have been given the opportunity to have a Silver Branch feature from Black Bough Poetry.

Black Bough publish regular anthologies of imagist micro-poems (their Christmas and Winter editions are beatiful and moving and wintry and perfect), facilitate the weekly #TopTweetTuesday poetry-fest on Twitter AND have created a series of Silver Branch showcases for featured poets. I was so moved and excited to be invited to be a featured poet. Please look at what Matthew M C Smith has created here. He really demonstrates that editing is an art form in its own right.

https://www.blackboughpoetry.com/christmas-special-21-sarah-connor

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A poem about cancer, or anything really

4am and I’m filled with it
the taste in my mouth
like I’m stuffed with coins
each finger filled with it
no
4am and it’s here in the room
with me I’ve been swallowed
by cancer I’m a nodule
floating in a sea of cancer
I breathe it in I float in it
I’m drowning

6am and it’s getting light
time to pack it away
time to squash it down
into my lungs my bones
time to swallow it down

it’s in me don’t let me scream

I started blogging at fantasticmetastaticme.wordpress.com. I write poems at fmmewritespoems.wordpress.com. You can follow either, or both – or neither, obviously! – depending on your interest.

Love is a bit like tea and tea is a bit like love

Love should be made afresh each day, like tea.
Does that sound too mundane? Consider now
the cup I bring up every morning, free
from thoughts about repayment, and then how
you put a cup beside me when I’m at
my desk and working hard, because you see
that I might need it. Let’s extend it out:
our teapot holds enough for the whole family,
and when our friends drop by we offer tea
to say “we love you, and we’re glad you’re here”.
We offer tea as comfort, sympathy,
as a small warmth, protection against fear.
Love’s measured not in words, but in our deeds –
I say “I love you” when I make you tea.

Ingrid over at Experiments in fiction has asked us to write a sonnet for St Valentine’s Day. Wierdly, she has given us the theme of “love”.

Winter night

Light’s spilling from the window,
warm as gingerbread,
sticky as love.
Light’s spilling from the window
and I pause here for a moment,
between the dark blue night and
the light spilling from the window,
warm as gingerbread.

In December, we triolet. Another triolet, unrhymed, unrhythmed, stretched and bent, but still recognisable.

leaving home

I didn't break down in Ikea
even though you're leaving,
even though you turned to me
clutching a pillow,
the way a fox might hold a bird,
too big to swallow. No.
I smiled at you.

Liminal

Who even knows what liminal means?
Reading between the lines, I know
that when you use that word,
you’re trying to impress me, to just brush
me with your intellectual prowess
leaving me hanging halfway
between desire and disdain –
I know you want to almost
touch me, almost arouse me,
leave me wanting.

This is for Sammi’s weekend writing prompt – 57 words this time, inspired by the word “liminal”. When I hear the word liminal, I reach for my revolver.

Not really. I just don’t think I’ve ever used it in a sentence or a piece of writing before, and I’m not entirely sure I know what it means…

North coast

There are no havens here
only the angry wind
hurling itself at the cliff
and the ocean
a white curdling

each rock a blade
a barricade
each bay guarded
by stone teeth

 

For Sammi’s weekend prompt. I haven’t done one of these for ages…

We have always lived in the castle

With its high walls and heavy gates
that open with the gleam of gold
the flash of plastic
we have always lived here
secure in our large vocabularies
and convoluted grammar
and our knowledge of which fork to use.

We have always lived here
and wondered why others choose
to live in crowded tenements
and walk on muddy cart-tracks
to smoke on street corners
take pills and shit
to manufacture moods

when here, in this high tower,
the views are wonderful
and the breeze brings scents
of moonlight blossoms

come up come up
we call
then shut the door

For Christine’s daily writing prompt at Go Dog Go Cafe – and for the dVerse  open link night.

Christine prompts us to write a poem inspired by the title of a book.

What does the rook say? II

I’m here.

Goodnight –

Black-wing

Sharp-beak

Carrion-eater,

Goodnight –

Twist-claw

Chatter-box

Dark-flight

Shadow-thrower

Croak-throat

Crack-beak

Bright-eye

Goodnight,

Nest-builder

High-flyer

Harsh-crier

I’m here.

I wrote a very short poem a couple of days ago, imagining what my local rooks were saying to each other. Their evening conversation reminded me of the Waltons’ sign off. I’ve revisited their good-nights here, with almost kennings, in an almost-poem.

Doll – poem for Ms Quickly

Never seen such glassy eyes
I mean blank empty

because this pink plastic skull
is hollow.
teeny tiny waist
and this curved torso
is a cavern

legs can be bent
figure is fully posable

hands curve to hold

these eyelashes are fully nylon
this hair is fully stylable

these feet are trapped
tip toe
lotus blossom

they hurt