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.

Advertisement

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

Homage To An Avuncular Neighbor – John Michael Flynn

 

At ten I brought him my new

Boy’s Life each month

to share a survival story or two.

 

He did the talking

mostly about the Pacific theatre.

He knew war, didn’t like or glean any sense from it.

 

I did more than listen to his silences.

I grew wiser within them.

I brought their lessons to my father.

 

On sunny days we mowed and raked his lawn.

All winter long I helped him

shovel his drive.

 

Today, I learned he died in bed

while his wife was baking zucchini bread

for an annual church function.

 

His daughters and grand-children

were far away.

No game on TV. No warning.

 

Just the week before, I’d held his ladder in place

while he’d nailed above his garage door

a big wooden yellow butterfly

 

that he’d cut, designed

and painted himself.

He called it Easter Light.

 

In 2015, John Michael Flynn was an English Language Fellow with the US State Department at the Far Eastern State University in Khabarovsk, Russia. He is now back home in Virginia, where he teaches English part-time at Piedmont Virginia Community College. His most recent poetry collection, Keepers Meet Questing Eyes, is available from Leaf Garden Press. You can learn more about John and his published work at www.basilrosa.com.

March 20, 2017March 20, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: butterfly, childhood, creative, death, family, humanity, John Michael Flynn, lessons, life, loss, memory, neighbor, past, poem, Poetry, seasons, silence, survival, US, VA, war, wisdom, writing, youth Leave a comment