Pretending to linger
I make a show
of standing on the threshold
one shoulder inside
this room we’ve filled with moments,
cheeks smooshed against windows
limbs spilling, grasping
from cupboards unclosed
and floorboards lifting loose
to show the bodies
no longer hidden, buried beneath.
After the heat passed out of our veins
and cold sucked all energy
right through the soles of our feet
to the same place shadows reached to.
When your voice seemed to linger,
half calling,
your smile flickering in my periphery.
That was when I turned my head,
slow and deliberate,
lips caught around words
I’d wished I’d said to you.
Small Flies and Other Wings
Christine Ay Tjoe
After the breakup:
easing her out of the settee cushions
so we could see the damage you left.
Spaces marked by absence.
Your idea of husbandry,
less obvious than building fences
to keep her tamed.
You took her wings,
kept them between glass,
along with all the others
collected and curated
to remind yourself,
how many birds roosted
in the catch of your palms.
They grew back so different,
translucent to the eye
and always tucked away
from those who might be watching.
You would not return to her
for wings that looked like these.
Not when there were others
much prettier for plucking.
Each evening I begin unwinding myself,
searching out the teasing thread
that will lead to the knots
wrangled tighter each day.
As if I am a set of headphones
snaring pocket lint in my tangled nets
until I’ve frayed too far,
and simply snap.
The sign says no running, and the tiles are slick
with water sloshed up from bodies heaving
soaked costumes over the ceramic edge.
Blown out cheeks, red eyes, and tremble arms,
one bloke who kick off as if it will propel him up,
flailing mockery of a front crawl splattering
onto the pool edge where a teenage lifeguard
squeegees the flooded walkway back to damp,
yellow shirt a symbol that he’s been trained
to fetch a brick from the depths of the deep end.
Moves slow while his colleague plays cat’s cradle,
with the whistle roped around their neck,
discuss who will hose down the shower stalls,
since the pool is almost empty now,
apart from the elderly pair doing lengths,
and a girl bone dry in the changing room arch
telling herself to step out of the fringes
before the clock on the wall ticks along further
and the whistle is blown for the last call.
I chose option three for tonight’s poetics prompt, and incorporated the word fringe into my poem. I’ll admit to feeling a little apprehensive about posting, especially when one of my previous poems got a shout out in the prompt post, I felt as if I’d set a standard to live up to.
Carol J Forrester 
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