Category: Miz Q
-
Miz Quickly’s Day 25: Value
I’ll Tell You the Value of … that 2nd week of August; it was all life should be. All I wanted. Sitting there on a seawall, on a Monday, on a tide-swept step, algae-green, emerald-slick, still slippery from the retreating sea. And I’m a slow spoon into gelato. Never had a thrill quite like this…
-
Miz Quickly’s Day 24: Spiral
When Twiddling Your Thumbs Just Won’t Do I’ve emptied the fridge. There’s a shallow pool of water on the floor, and a repairman is due in an hour. Appointment times are an opportunity to fidget, so I rearrange cupboards, restock tinned veg and beans, realign spice jars, fill canisters with rice, with flour, with sugar,…
-
Miz Quickly’s Day 22: An Object
That Dog And your little dog, too. Toto. Barking at wind and witches and straw and wizards. I’m not an enthusiast of fluff and noise. Terriers — they’re too small to know their place. No perspective. A constant scurry. No waiting for their own tail. My dog never barked at wind. Nor witches. Far too…
-
Miz Quickly’s Day 21: Summer
Summer Feet My feet have a shallow hold on summer. Clean as sea air. Cleaned by sea waves. Sand cool as periwinkle blue, and days sweet as pears. It waits. There on the calendar. Just a few pages away. written for Miz Quickly’s Day 21: Summer
-
Miz Quickly Day 20: Dialogue
A Minute’s Deliberation ‘You look like a hundred year old piece of Gorgonzola,’ she says, ‘or a cabbage leaf.’ Five minutes later, she is still talking but I’ve forgotten to listen by then. There’s a lot of mileage in a nod and a smile. This is a woman who I’d introduce as my friend, but…
-
Miz Quickly’s Day 19: Aubade
The Duck Down Blues Farewell, my pillow, whose duck down seeps into fringe-edged seams. Feathers, a gander up my nose, and scribes itself into poetry that reaps and sows my kind weathered dreams. This old pillow, filled with worlds of dust, dead skin and mites, and slobber spit. Sunrise parts us — farewell fair remnants…
-
Miz Quickly’s Day: 18 & dVerse “Artisans”
Meatballs and Fish Scales Nothing’s more Italian than meatballs, Mum says. She’s holding a salmon by the tail and scraping off its scales. They’re spraying all over the place like unravelling sequins. Meatballs were invented by the Italians, she adds, in that I know everything about everything tone — and she’s hunched over the old…
-
Quadrille #24 and Miz Quickly’s Day 17
Dead Fly dead fly on the windowsill, whispered speck, legs up as if playing on monkey bars. little bugger won’t be flying anywhere; it’s missing a wing and its red welt eyes lack a point of view. brittle little thing is heading for the garbage bin. for dVerse: Quadrille (44 words) including “whisper”…
-
Miz Quickly’s Day 16: Blue Monday
Pinwheel Day’s It’s not the time for asking questions; I’m just a small piece in this bright mosaic. And the day pulls along on wooden pinwheels. Me, a bump and tumble on this old hay wagon, wedged like a slice on its shallow seat, led through sun-hot dust by a pony with ghosts for bones…
-
Miz Quickly’s Day 15: A Toy
Piano Sprites A miniture piano, she played it so well, in harmonies of D and A, bright quarter notes filled with Spite-ish joys. Phantom tones like heaven’s bells ringing folly towers. She played for hours, sunlight by halves, that musical sprite playing her toy piano. for Miz Quickly’s Day 15: A Toy
It's Still Life 