dog love – Lisa Reily

 

when, after ten years, the two of us were no longer alone

and a new man entered my life, took your seat

in the front of my car, you gnawed a seatbelt to shreds

in the backseat, freely expressing your disgust.

 

he and I thought you were sick, but it was love sickness, 

and loyalty. 

slowly, you allowed him to play with you,

granted him a ball, sometimes one of your soft toys;

you tolerated his presence at our table, if only for morsels,

traded seats without a whimper,

wagged your tail, if only briefly, upon his arrival at our door,

 

until one day, we both learned to trust him.

 

---

Lisa Reily is a former literacy consultant, dance director and teacher from Australia. Her poetry has been published in several journals, such as Amaryllis, London Grip, The High Window, Panoplyzine, Channel Magazine, The Fenland Reed, as well as Foxglove Journal. You can find out more at lisareily.wordpress.com.

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December 28, 2020 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: adapting, animals, arrival, Australia, change, creative, creativity, dog, door, introduction, learning, life, Lisa Reily, love, loyalty, pet, play, poem, Poetry, presence, relationship, trust, writing 2 Comments

Breathless – Bojana Stojcic

 

A storm was raging

that afternoon.

He stopped

to breathe with me.

 

It’s starting

to thunder.

I’m learning

to breathe on my own.

 

 

Bojana Stojcic is a teacher from Serbia, living in Germany. Her poems and flash pieces have been published or are forthcoming in Rust + Moth, Anti-Heroin Chic, Down in the Dirt, Mojave Heart Review, Dodging the Rain, The Opiate, The Stray Branch, Tuck magazine, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, Nightingale & Sparrow and Visual Verse. She blogs regularly at Coffee and Confessions to Go.

July 28, 2019July 28, 2019 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: afternoon, beginning, Bojana Stojcic, breath, change, creative, creativity, elements, Germany, learning, nature, poem, Poetry, rage, rain, relationship, Serbia, stop, storm, thunder, time, weather, writing 16 Comments

How I arrived at who I am – John Grey

 

When I was seven,

my father bought me an airplane kit,

something to put together

with glue and guile

and instructions translated directly

from the Korean.

 

He did not help me in any way.

And I proved useless at the task,

would have set fire to the little

balsawood pieces

had I been allowed to play with matches.

 

There are other projects,

other details,

but they all amounted to the same thing.

My hand and my eye

were as Sanskrit is to the Ford Edsel.

 

So I grew up

surrounded by piles

of shapes and images,

and the encouraging cry of,

“Go for it, kid.”

 

That’s why I sat in the corner

building things that always fell apart,

falling apart the more

with each passing year

while I struggled to patch here,

hammer a nail there,

employ the tools

whose use I never understood.

 

Luckily, somewhere along the line,

I was able to set aside objects

and take up with words.

Sure, the sentences I constructed

were no more stable

than my cars, my castles,

my Lego giraffe.

But, as long as it was down on paper,

a Ford Edsel really was Sanskrit.

It got so not even I knew the difference.

 

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. His work has recently been published in New Plains Review, Stillwater Review and Big Muddy Review, and is upcoming in Louisiana Review, Columbia College Literary Review and Spoon River Poetry Review.

July 3, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: Australia, childhood, creative, creativity, education, family, growth, humanity, images, John Grey, learning, life, memory, paper, past, poem, Poetry, shapes, skills, tools, words, writing, youth Leave a comment