30 October 2014

Blood Pudding




fat crackles as the tea
steeps and she tells stories
of catching the blood from
a stuck pig for
puddings, the stream of it
making a sort of music
against the side of the
pail, until she dropped it

as we butter bread fine-sliced by
machines and place shrink-wrapped
rashers gingerly on the pan, they
sing to us in a different
language, our stories similar
but dissimilar, the trading of
open fields for closed
classrooms, the curlew’s cry
for the strut of city pigeons







*published in Florida English 14 

Shamrocks




the writing, blue on white, was
a spidery lace, the delicate clump of
shamrocks fallen to the
parquet floor, the red-white-
blue-red-white-blue of the
envelope bearing foreign stamps
echoing the gold tasseled
flag we daily pledged to as
astronauts soared through black voids and
we drank Tang

in a cavern of bricks, blond,
red, thick-mortared, stone upon
stone, strung together by washlines,
narrow, sickly hedges
leaned up against some, catching
the last of the afternoon sun,
shadows lengthening upon the sidewalk
before all was dark again,
grinding of wheel-noise on the elevated tracks ever more
pronounced, now, under the
blinking of stars shining
on other shores



*published in Florida English 14