The Good Girl – Louise Wilford

 

Childhood stains it all,

blood that no amount of spit-wet tissue can rub out.

 

The playground grit against our knees,

the slap of rope on asphalt, skipping songs

coating the summer day. The walk-in cupboard where our toys

were kept, silverfish in its dusty corners.

 

That’s where I hid the card, the broken bits

of yellow-painted egg-box daffodils.

Crumbs like dried yolk stuffed in the Ludo box.

 

I’d missed school with the ‘flu’, so couldn’t finish it myself.

She’d stuck on the final leaves, filled in the last

few letters: OTHER’S DAY.

 

Glass animals on the windowsill

watched me as I tore the card to bits,

each wound a slice into her skin.

 

She’d ruined it, just as she soiled that Sunday

when she told them all I’d lied.

And all the while her alligator smile

tuned out their doubts.

 

As if a girl like her…

 

I felt her fingertips against the cardboard flowers,

her grinning brush-strokes on each painted edge.

 

Those old, sad days in which we played and wept.

For good or bad, they’re where we learned to be.

Until we die, they’re where our lives are kept.

 

 

Yorkshirewoman Louise Wilford is an English teacher and examiner. She has had around 50 poems and short stories published in magazines including Popshot, Pushing Out The Boat and Agenda, and has won or been shortlisted for several competitions. She is currently writing a children’s fantasy novel.

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July 23, 2018July 23, 2018 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: animals, blood, card, childhood, craft, creative, creativity, flowers, glass, grit, Louise Wilford, memory, past, playground, poem, Poetry, school, smile, UK, wound, writing, Yorkshire, youth Leave a comment

Cherries – Rachel Bower

 

Sometimes habits pull you through

and you wonder if it should be scuffed

and slack and holding hands

in the dark, bristle calved, taking

turns to spit in the sink and piss.

Or if it should gleam tight like a cherry.

 

You wonder if this is the taste of bruises

from the bag, whether the crash of juice

in your ears will stop when the rot sets in

whether it is better to shrivel as a pair

on the stalk or pluck now – softest pop –

and lick sweet sap from the wound.

 

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 23, 2017July 24, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: body, bruises, crash, creative, creativity, dark, ears, fruit, hands, humanity, juice, pair, poem, Poetry, Rachel Bower, rot, sap, senses, taste, UK, wound, writing, Yorkshire 2 Comments