Category: dVerse
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dVerse Quadrille #64
Quickly Around the Neighbourhood The old house on Hollow Road is being gutted like a mackerel. Dust fouling the air. How long can you hold your breath. These things never happen quickly. – There’s a shopping trolley in the creek, water up to here. It used to be fish. dVerse Quadrille #64 “Quick”…
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In-Form: Reiki
(Untitled) Bold, this iron hot, this devil you know. Choice is always an option. ℳ A Reiki form poem for In-Form Poetics and dVerse Does Adages . Reiki: 5.5.4.3 syllable count; no title; rhyme optional
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dVerse Quadrille #63
A Stoney-Face Sky Summer’s end burns exhausted, as if falling faint from effort. The sky is stoney-faced, torn and tense and shining, and trickling jigsaw shapes against the windowpane. Earth chews its bottom lip, nervous, life’s slowing to a static stride. Winter watches in the distance. for dVerse Quadrille #63 44 words, excluding the…
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dVerse Quadrille #61
Puzzles The neighbour has a white rabbit, and a terrier that yaps all day long (at that rabbit) — and there’s an empty vase set on the windowsill, shaped like an over-ripe woman (desirous of sex). It’s like a puzzle, that’s missing a few vital pieces. for dVerse Quadrille #61 and Punctuation & Enjambment
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dVerse Rooms
Grandpa was autumn. That’s how I saw him. In his brown trousers and rusty-red shirt and a folded paper hat on his head that looked like an origami boat, and he’d stand there in his basement workshop sawing up some piece of driftwood, sawdust flying about like a blizzard. A lightbulb hung from a cord…
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dVerse Quadrille #60
The Art of Scratching I’m an itcher, perfected as a child. Mum made me a coat from Dad’s old peacoat – worn during the war, only war worth fighting (he said), claimed every shot since was political mischief. Hated that coat. Scratched my neck raw. Like rope burn. dVerse Quadrille #60
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Haibun and a Twiglet
I. It’s hot. Like record-breaking hot. I want to chill my skin across cold marble. Like shortcrust pastry needs. Or submerge myself into a wave, into the sequinned imagination of a mermaid. Like a cold water fish. Like a big old lazy cod. I want to hibernate in a green grassy mirage before I falter…
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A Freedom Haibun for dVerse
A Last Gasp Breath I learned today that he died on Saturday. Liver cancer. He didn’t want to live in that soon-gone-body any more. Didn’t want those same wiry eyebrows that knitted together, a spiky caterpillar, when he frowned in pain. Didn’t want those same weak legs. Weak creaky knees that refused to hold his…
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dVerse Brands
Tea and Toast I could lose myself in this life. In the kettle’s roiling kindness. Breakfast’s on the table, I say, and we slip in and out of this hour of idle moods, bite into wheat toast, crunch and crisp as a cliff edge. You read the paper, share special bits or two of news,…
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dVerse Lessons
Pigeons Lessons It was Grandpa who taught me the lesson of returning home. You see, he had two homing pigeons, ‘though they could have been doves, the colour of magnolias and lilies. Grandpa cooed each pigeon goodbye before hefting them into the air. Good luck, he said, as their velvet angel wings echoed into the…
It's Still Life 