Hooked – Kristin Garth

 

I swim around your boat for days before

I catch your eye. On deck, the sun so bright

it blocks your face just long enough to lure

my head around these blinding rays and right

into your pirate heart. My tail begins

to flip against the waves, and I cannot

pretend I don’t belong to you. The end

for me is not a hook or net. You caught

me with a look. My trembling hands descend,

before my captain now. Your hook overcomes

exposes half a girl. My piscine end

on board transformed, subdued. The sun

so warm against us while we rock and float.

New legs you touch first, always on this boat.

 

 

Kristin Garth is a poet from Pensacola. Her poetry has been featured in Anti-Heroin Chic, Fourth & Sycamore, Mookychick, Moonchild Magazine, Occulum, Faded Out and many other publications. Follow her on Twitter: @lolaandjolie and her website: kristingarth.wordpress.com.

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October 27, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: boat, body, creative, creativity, eye, FL, float, heart, hook, Kristin Garth, legs, look, net, poem, Poetry, rays, senses, sun, US, warmth, water, waves, writing Leave a comment

Waiting – Rachel Bower

 

I scrutinise my nipples for sap

but I’m not even sure where to look

and listen carefully for a splash

of colour but hear nothing I know.

 

It’s been months of course

but I think you might not come now

and even with your head between my walking legs

I do not know where you are.

 

In time my body will prove wiser

and when all that raspberry tea and swirling

does not bring you any quicker

I feel into age-old maps of women.

You will come when it is time.

 

 

Rachel Bower is a poet and research fellow at the University of Leeds. Her pamphlet, Moon Milk, will be published with Valley Press in May 2018. She is currently co-editing an anthology with Helen Mort entitled Verse Matters, which is out with Valley Press in November 2017. Her book, Epistolarity and World Literature, 1980-2010 will be published by Palgrave Macmillan in August 2017. Rachel’s poems have been published by Stand Magazine, BBC Radio, Now Then Magazine, Valley Press, Three Drops Press, The Stare’s Nest, Pankhearst and others, and she has had poems shortlisted for several prizes, including The London Magazine Poetry Prize and the Plough Prize 2016. She is also the founder of Verse Matters, a feminist arts collective in Sheffield.

July 17, 2017July 17, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: age, body, colour, creative, creativity, head, humanity, legs, maps, months, poem, Poetry, Rachel Bower, raspberry, sap, senses, time, UK, waiting, wisdom, women, writing, Yorkshire 1 Comment