Hand-me-downs – Kate Garrett

 

The bricks housed phantoms;

the anachronistic soda counter

 

I now recall in a haze of decades

and miles as solid, yet of its time

 

and the man running the shop still

slicked his grey hair Brylcreem smooth.

 

Some villages never catch up.

The drugstore was plastic and rounded

 

and faded and chrome, Americana buried

just for me, so I could uncover

 

its message one morning—

the new kid with bony shoulders grandma

 

folded into floral sundresses I wanted to love,

relics of a childhood that wasn’t mine.

 

But I know we each spent our time huddled

and waiting for progress, or nuclear winter,

 

nursing fears we couldn’t name, hiding

in cellars from the first sign of a black sky.

 

Kate Garrett is a writer, mother, editor, wife, history buff, and amateur folklorist. Her work is published here and there online and in print, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her most recent books are The Density of Salt (Indigo Dreams Publishing, 2016) – which was longlisted for best pamphlet in the 2016 Saboteur Awards – and Deadly, Delicate (Picaroon Poetry, 2016). Her next pamphlet, You’ve never seen a doomsday like it, will be published in 2017 by Indigo Dreams. Kate lives in Sheffield with her husband, four children, and a cat named Mimi.

Advertisement

February 12, 2017February 12, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: Americana, change, childhood, creativity, decades, fear, history, humanity, Kate Garrett, life, memory, message, nature, past, poem, Poetry, progress, sky, time, UK, village, writing, youth Leave a comment

Losing interest in the sound of petrichor – Kate Garrett

 

and the scent of the thunder;

you’ll tell me it’s ozone broken by forked

lightning, but thunder has a smell

of its own:

heavy and green, pregnant with wildflowers.

 

The clouds pressed through our roof,

drowning a protestant sun; it was one

of those evenings I wished for a bee sting

one of those evenings when heat rises

and I am overly alive, when I’m breathing

in too much summer to stem the panic.

 

And the weight of your body

on mine did nothing

and the restless sweat escaping

my pores did not cool me down—

 

but when night fell, the owls sheltered

from the hot rain in graveyard trees

and I wandered beneath their calls

to calm the tremors.

 

Kate Garrett is a writer, mother, editor, wife, history buff, and amateur folklorist. Her work is published here and there online and in print, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her most recent books are The Density of Salt (Indigo Dreams Publishing, 2016) – which was longlisted for best pamphlet in the 2016 Saboteur Awards – and Deadly, Delicate (Picaroon Poetry, 2016). Her next pamphlet, You’ve never seen a doomsday like it, will be published in 2017 by Indigo Dreams. Kate lives in Sheffield with her husband, four children, and a cat named Mimi.

January 31, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: calm, change, creativity, fauna, flora, humanity, Kate Garrett, lightning, nature, night, petrichor, poem, Poetry, rain, storm, summer, thunder, UK, weather, wildflowers, writing Leave a comment