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6 July: The Maslow Hierarchy
A CONVERSATION WITH THE OTHER SIDE Wrong number, my mother says. and she’s speaking to someonenearby, saying “I misdialled her.” I hang up the phone.And then pick up it back up again.I listen. She’s still on the line. “You haven’t hung up,” I say.And she’s talking to me, butshe’s not saying anything. It’s words. Words.…
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Miz Quickly’s Bicycles
This poem is inspired by “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” by Wallace Stevens and a poem by Peter Frankis and Miz Quickly’s 5 July bicycle prompt Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Bicycle IAmong the twenty-six spokesof my bicycle the only movingthing was the nine of spadescard pegged to the back wheel. II.I…
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3 July 2020 The Beach
A Summer Storm Feels like winter is in the air,as wind howls hard off the sea.Gales piping through in trees,and sheep have turned, facingnorth. See the grass, it’s level,flat, and not a soul walks onthe beach. Not a foot to fall,no kites to reach the sky.No way can this be July. PB 3 July The…
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Miz Quickly’s Cats
Cat Scratch What shape of fate made you Cat. Ginger stripe orcinnamon spice. Cat at the window, centre stage. Cat scratch on paper,you’re a poet you said.A cat named Dylan,gin-soaked and sleepingon the floor. To rack and ruin is the phrase he used.Cat at the door, black asa dark night, speakingto and replying “We”. And…
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Miz Quickly’s “In the Can”
No. 6: Things in a Can About 10 minutes drive from Grandma’s porch, and a few minutes more past that totem pole at the Y in the road to my cousins’ old house, is the B&M restaurant. It was famous for a bowl of pork and beans with thick sauce sweetened with molasses. The beans, they were just normal beans. The…
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Miz Quickly’s Do-It-Yourself Prompt
No. 1: Admirable Thing about Someone You Dislike Good things. Um. Good things. Good things about him, yes? Well, he shares the same name with my recently retired dentist. He has a long white beard with a blizzard of food stuck in it, think swallow’s nest, and nests and baby birds are a good thing.…
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for PB Day 2
A Sonnet to a Lemon Drop It’s like this, I said, you know when you walk through Lynch Gate at St Nicholas’s church, with the old yew tree leaning toward you, and every parishioner for a 1,000 years is buried underfoot, and tombstones lean just like that yew tree, and you open those church doors, heavy…
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PB Day 1
A Spectre Mum was the space between fragile and forever, between fierce and a cheek-swept kiss. There was once a memory with her name, a spectre now. I heard it once, it tugged at my sleep, and then scattered off my fingertips when I woke. If I forget will you forgive me? I passed a shop window today. My world’s closed, windows soaped…
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for Twiglets #183
A Happy Poem I have theparaphernalia.the pen.the paper.the pencilwith no rubber erasure.write, I say.a happy poem.blank. paper.I look upand there you are.smiling. for Twiglets #183 We Romantics ©️ Misky 2020
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Sometimes a Girl Scout
A poem starting with a line from Geoffrey Philp’s A Fragment of the Quilt SOMETIMES A GIRL SCOUT Sometimes I wonder which badge Mum would’ve earned for raising me. What’s a mother to do with a child who’s a socialist, and anti-war, and says she’s a political dissident. Who took up smoking because shopsgave away…
It's Still Life 