The Questions
accumulated with missing relations
in photographs of his grandad’s family,
his Nana’s dropped dark hints.
No Bed of Roses
To distract us from horrible numbers
I wear this hat. It’s wide as a plate, full of roses and birds,
a platter in red and white, and thin as a peel of sunburned skin.
You can see right through it. The birds fly around it
and nest and do all the bird things. You can watch
my hat instead of the news of the horrible numbers
who populate all of our nightmares
disturbing our rest, I say rest because who
still sleeps? after all that has happened.
The birds, though, they sleep. They sleep
among the roses encircling my large plate of a hat,
the hat thin as reason, thin as a thought of compromise,
and wide as all one person can do to avoid
knowing certain things. Wide as a sea of forgetting
the horrible numbers, wide as loss, as much loss
as one small person can carry upon a hat,
even a hat as wide as mine. Ah, the roses.
They have such a lovely scent, it keeps me
awake at night. Let them, I say. Let them.
1. Store
Attach your head to the box.
Do not shout or write, that’s not the problem.
Ghosts, breath, nose, brows, knee
big hands
your time has not yet come.
2. Coo
Light on your room over the ice.
Do not worry, the year after anguish.
Encouraged by the team, the mosquitoes, the controversies, the pilots involved
birdsong
but your sound did not arrive.
Burning House Press are excited to welcome ROBERT FREDE KENTER & ELISABETH HORAN as our JULY 2019 guest editors! As of today ROBERT & ELI (( ICE FLOE PRESS )) will take over editorship of Burning House Press online for the full month of JULY.
Submissions are open from today – 1st JULY and will remain open until 24TH JULY. Continue reading “JULY 2019 Guest Editor/s Are ROBERT FREDE KENTER & ELISABETH HORAN!!! Theme/s: SECRETS & LIES”
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