by Carol J Forrester

Down To Dregs – A Poem By Carol J Forrester

I find enough dregs in this coffee cup
to stay past closing,
beyond the last click of the latch catching
and the solid drone of the dishwasher ending
the soft clink, clink, clink of glasses settling
back into their neat, tidy shelves.

We listen to the distant dissonant clamour
of other lingering loiterers,
drifting through honeyed darkness,
a slow breath seeping
out, out, out,
like a last.

My own chest filled with gurgle, and cackle,
a sunken, sodden conversation
I dread to dredge up.
Embellish the quiet with a sudden, empty sigh
your own tense shoulders easing
when I finally chose the word goodnight.

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by Carol J Forrester

Paperchain Woman – A Poem By Carol J Forrester

Poor girl, homestuck on chapel steps,
pin-plucked and nip-tucked
into her paper figure.
They read yesterday’s news
in the ink across her collar bone.
Her classified crowded slippers blister
red blotches panting ‘we’ll be in touch’.
So she tips between pavement cracks
split seams and spills out sand,
has to scour her hours from the floor.
Cello tape smile caught on a crinkle
till the man with a nail for a tongue
hammers her a better one.
He mistakes her legs for screwdrivers,
tries to put them back in their box,
then pets her like a bitch when she bites,
and asks if she’s learnt to beg,
just another mass produced misogynist
with his windup voice box
explaining to her what she should expect.

by Carol J Forrester

To Be, Or Not To Be, Either Way That’s A Lot Of Books – A Poem By Carol J Forrester

There’s a cunning to books I don’t own.
Tricks the eye into slipping
from shelves stacked ‘soon’
where old resolutions stagger
parchment pale and haggard
around uncracked spines.
I play a teasing game,
ply their pages with well-meaning,
find an aged acquaintance,
face new with forgetting.
Thumb their successors guiltily
like a child caught, ear at the door,
and smuggle home each new treasure,
slip it into the seams unseen
and whisper ‘no more, no more’
with every book I’ve ever bought.

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by Carol J Forrester

The Breakfast Table

You come in wearing the morning’s work about your hands,
and deep in the creases of your eyes.
Mud shucked in a brittle heap
you leave your boots at the door,
shed a pelt of polyurethane
its pockets of tags and split ended string.
Accept a breakfast well past your waking,
to watch your daughters rise sleep stained and stretching.

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