Tag / poem

by Carol J Forrester

End Of The Garden #DVersePoets

There are no apples left for picking,

only leaves caught up in the sunlight

and a slow breeze passing through.

Back between my molars sticks a pip

that my tongue cannot pry loose

no matter the shapes it twists,

the times it risks my bite.

A sparrow in the branches sings,

tells me there are more trees,

more apples,

but they are behind walls, and gates,

and men with bright black guns.

They tell people which trees are good,

which ones are bad.

It doesn’t matter about the apples so much,

it’s more about the hands.

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by Carol J Forrester

Removals Man #DVersePoets #TuesdayPoetics

They hire him to take up gravestones

in old cemetery grounds.

Pay him by the hour,

to tease out lichen lost names,

note them,

in neat, thin rows of records

only his eyes will read,

and murmur each syllable

into the fresh split of dark soil

before the groundsman comes

with his sack of grass seed,

already whistling

to no one at all.

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by Carol J Forrester

Conversation With Half An Onion #DVersePoets #Qudrille

The fridge stinks again,

the thing lolling at the back,

sweating, sickly sweet,

cling film wrapped and taunting

as if to say ‘this is just your desert

for peeling me down

till we both cried shameless,

and you held a knife like a question.’

 

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by Carol J Forrester

Honeysuckle Wife #DVersePoetics

Cut me off at the ankles or so you said,

stood astride my stump, saw grinned.

‘Not so pretty now are we’

either of us.

 

Spent the winter finding my roots,

you brought on your hot house girls

throwing out the deadheads

before they even had chance to wilt.

 

Spring freshened up all that toughening

from too many years the same.

Found new shoots moving upwards,

more bend, less bark to my bite.

 

Summer and I redecorated it all,

cloaked myself in colour,

announced my presence, my survival.

Dared you to try cutting me down again.

 

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by Carol J Forrester

A Pygmalion Girl #WeekendWritingPrompt

Why do that to yourself?

Play around with perfection,

even if it was only skin deep,

and the smoothness of these curves

turned your stomach at night,

when dusk settles its hands

either side of your hips,

presses into the grooves

where his tools worked you

into beauty.

Mounted you his sculpture

for all men to see.

Do you not appreciate how

his love made you

into a woman worth seeing?