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Everydayness for Real Toads
Everydayness I am forever a singing stone, feather weight, stained by air and drink, recipes for poetry and sweet confectionary written for Real Toads poetic form: tanka (5.7.5.7.7) and text “found” with Neruda’s “Sweetness, always”
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for Sunday Whirl #284
A Crooked Hole My world-wise old grandmother poked a crooked hole in the clouds, planted runner beans in the ground. First they grew up skinny lattices, then through the woodshed eaves, then up they ran, escaped this world up in the sky. And my grandmother stood there, watching, and rolling tobacco paper between her fingers.…
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Mis Quickly’s Day 28: In the Style of
Your Little Black Cloud This is just to say that I’ve drained your little black cloud. It came swimming at me, like a water bird. A depth. A loon. And I was a boat in its wake. Rocked. written for Miz Quickly Day 28: write a poem in the style of William Carlos…
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Miz Quickly’s Day 27: Restaurants
This is a revised version. Al’s Fresco Palace Restaurant in Hong Kong From time to time, I’m still somewhere under a China sun that staggers in midday heat. I’m below a canvas shadow. On a wrought iron chair. Where pavements are gum-stuck; the air’s bruised. This is not heaven, and at times, it’s hardly earth,…
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Miz Quickly’s Day 26: In The Mood
Did You Hear the Rain The radio is white noise, but I can’t help listening — falling into “Did You Hear the Rain”. I hum, and empty the dishwasher, dry the glasses before they spot. The phone rings. Her ashes have arrived, says the receptionist, you can pick her up today. And I can’t hear…
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dVerse Verbifies
Let’s Talk Fog The fog conceived this stomach sky, cut so thick it’s stepped, a smoke-steeping attitude, it’s a fine sort of blasé. The world Mayed and greened, and diesel-eyed dark, and the air speaks of lost fire. written for dVerse “Verbified” and Poetic Asides “Let’s …“
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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…
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Twiglet #8 “Folding Chairs”
The Art of Being a Chair Measured and meticulous, we put them there, lined them up like a keyboard, organised in tidy rows of rules, standing, whalebone stiff, and I bet that van Gogh’s chair was never this breathless. But there’s no funeral here, no sermon, no ceremony — just a room, waiting for the…
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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,…
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dVerse Haibun #29
That Dog And your little dog, too. Toto. Totally Toto. Barking at wind and witches and straw and wizards. I’m not an enthusiast of cute and fluff noise. Terriers — too small to know their place. No perspective. A constant scurry, and never waiting for their own tail. My dog never barked at wind. Nor…
It's Still Life 