Downtown after the offices let out – John Grey

 

Tall buildings cast overlapping shadows.

It’s night long before nighttime.

Last of the commuters catch their train, their bus.

Garages empty out.

The few inner city dwellers

lock and latch the doors

of their small fortresses.

At street level,

two men approach each other.

It’s dark. Identities are smudged.

Is it? No it can’t be?

Wasn’t he the one who… ?

And didn’t he…?

They nod as they pass –

recognition or just acknowledgment

that there’s no other in this world –

neither gives an indication.

Each hears footsteps

on the concrete sidewalk,

softer and softer,

farther and farther away.

Then all would be silent

if it weren’t for themselves.

But they don’t feel responsible,

just alone.

 

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John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Published in Nebo, Euphony, Columbia Review, Leading Edge, Poetry East and Midwest Quarterly.

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January 7, 2023 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: Australia, buildings, city, creative, creativity, darkness, distance, encounter, footsteps, identity, John Grey, leaving, moment, night, poem, Poetry, recognition, shadows, silence, sound, street, US, writing Leave a comment

Who I’m Really Thinking About When My Grandaughter Assumes I’m Missing Her Grandfather and Gives Me that Soft-Sweet Look – Diane D. Gillette

 

I remember Rita in her pink kitten heels, her hair coiffed up in a lavender helmet, her lips leaving ruby stained proof of her existence on my neck. She tasted like merlot, and sounded like the sigh after a storm. I remember the pretty way she danced around my living room to the Nat King Cole record she brought over. Her hips entranced me, and I pulled her back on the couch so we could make love all over again. I remember the way her gardenia perfume settled into my pores for days after she was gone. How I could feel her skin under my hands, soft like butter, for weeks, for months, if I just closed my eyes and thought about her. I remember the taste of rain in the air when she drove away. I remember thinking that no matter what she said or believed, she’d come back. I remember finding the wedding announcement from the newspaper. Or rather, it found me. A manila envelope with no return address. No note attached. Just the announcement, snipped and clipped so sharp – a papercut right to the heart. It said the bride had been beautiful. But there’s no way Rita could have been as beautiful as she had been dancing in my living room.

 

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Diane D. Gillette (she/her) lives in Chicago. Her work is a Best Small Fictions selection. Her chapbook We’re All Just Trying to Make It to January 2nd is available through Fahmidan & Co. Publishing. She is a founding member of the Chicago Literary Writers. Read more at www.digillette.com.

September 27, 2022 by foxglovejournal Categories: flash fiction, Prose, UncategorizedTags: beauty, dance, Diane D. Gillette, ending, eyes, fiction, flash, hands, IL, leaving, loss, love, memory, micro, music, past, rain, senses, short, storm, story, time, US Leave a comment

Stormy Weather – Deborah Guzzi

 

the day—storm charged glowers

a bruised sky shutters over a shedding

maple forests bleeding maroons and

citrus hues

 

I worry a nail. Rain begins to pelt

the windshield—wind-loosened

butterscotch bits hopscotch across the

tarmac

 

the scene an impressionist dream

a watercolor wash of leaving—too soon

the mountain will be monochrome

a scratch board

 

though pine and spruce will punctuate

with pricks of blue-blackish green

no longer will I walk barefoot

on the lawn

 

 

Deborah Guzzi writes full time. Her third book, The Hurricane, is available through Prolific Press. Her poetry appears in Allegro, Artificium, Shooter, Amethyst Review and Foxglove Journal in the UK, Existere, The Ekphrastic Review, Scarlet Leaf Review and Subterranean Blue Poetry, Canada – Tincture, Australia – mgv2>publishing, France – Cha: Asian Review, China – Vine Leaves Literary Journal, Australia – The Scarlet Leaf Review – Greece, Ribbons, pioneertown, Sounding Review, Bacopa Literary Review, The Aurorean, Liquid Imagination, The Tishman Review, Page & Spine and others in the USA.

December 3, 2018December 5, 2018 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: change, colours, creative, creativity, Deborah Guzzi, dream, elements, forests, lawn, leaving, mountain, nature, poem, Poetry, rain, scene, sky, storm, tarmac, trees, weather, wind, writing Leave a comment

Separation – Rachel Lewis

 

In seconds the ice will crack bright on the pond.

You’ll lift a bubble of it in your hand, ungloved.

In minutes the mud will have soaked through our shoes,

And we’ll leave behind the gardens and the bending statues.

In an hour’s time we’ll leave this place I’ve always loved

And in a day anyone might have come or gone.

 

Hot, tight, soft, close, are goodbyes here,

As though intensity could be a kind of glue,

For all the things we’ve promised here, to glue

Them to my promise that next year,

This city, here.

 

 

Rachel is a London-based poet. She was previously a poetry editor for the Mays Anthology and a Young Producer with Poet in the City. Her poetry can also be found on the Poetry Society website, in the Dawntreader and Kindling journals, and unpredictably at live events around London.

March 17, 2018 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: bubble, city, creative, creativity, elements, gardens, goodbye, hand, ice, intensity, leaving, London, mud, nature, poem, Poetry, pond, promise, Rachel Lewis, shoes, time, UK, writing Leave a comment

dogeared inspiration – AM Roselli

 

I dogeared a page in your book

of inspirational quotes, Volume Two.

The one you keep in the nightstand

on your side of the bed.

 

The bed we never should have bought

with that money. Rather than a bamboo

pillowtop, we should have invested

in help from voices other than our own.

 

When you wake and find I’m not here

fitting into the lump our sleep pattern created

on a mattress supposedly resistant to lumps–

 

If you shuffle to the dog-eared page

of inspirational quotes, Volume Two,

perhaps you’ll figure out why

 

I was inspired to leave.

 

AM Roselli is a writer and artist who lives in the Hudson Valley, New York. She has a collection of illustrated poetry, Love of the Monster, published by Door in the Floor Publishing, 2016, available on Amazon. She previously served as an art director at Prentice Hall Educational Publishing. Since 2014 she has been sharing her writing and artwork on her blog, anntogether.com.

July 29, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: AM Roselli, bed, book, creative, creativity, discovery, humanity, inspiration, leaving, money, NY, page, poem, Poetry, quotes, regret, relationship, sleep, US, voices, waking, words, writing 4 Comments

The red suitcase – Roma Havers

 

And here I sit and pack my soul

into the red red suitcase.

 

For I am paper planes

Crisping under sunlight through a magnifying glass,

 

and she is the hand waving,

behind the glass.

 

They are all hands waving,

pressing nails beneath our eyes

to hold in the salt water;

for the make an ocean here would drown us.

 

And I do not know whether I will feel further away;

the last few months have been the distance

that I tracked with string, holding our lines together

like a spider’s web across the map.

there was no salt water between us then,

only the rising flesh of the earth’s own secretion.

 

When I get there I will light a lantern for you.

and let the mist of distance breathe in the cracks between us.

 

 

Roma Havers is a Manchester-based poet, currently in her third year of an Drama and English degree at The University of Manchester where she is the Books Editor for The Mancunion and Chair of the Creative Writing Society. She performs regularly at spoken word nights, and events such as Reclaim the Night and UniPresents.

 

 

November 6, 2016January 26, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: change, distance, leaving, light, loss, nature, parting, poem, Poetry, Roma Havers, separation, travel, UK 1 Comment