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girl children in the 50's
by Sherry Pasquarello
bra burners of the 60's
weighted down with childhood parables
slogged on in our attempt
goals in sight, if not in grasp
strained within ourselves
to be allowed to be
yet, for some it came to naught
thought too uppity,in this pursuit of equality
we opted to buy push up bras
and remember things differently.
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poems read by dead poets. a christmas gift
by Sherry Pasquarello
something odd and awful, unexpected
on silvered discs.
the voices of dead poets
their words, as familiar as morning coffee and buttered toast
their voices unexpected, unpleasant as
the corpse of a fly hidden in the blackberry jam.
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Untitled
by Waita Dawn Davies
Here is another kind
of childhood blessed
by poverty - this time
urban, rambunctious
grittier than rural India
but the memories pile
up and the images
are waiting to become
poetry
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Friday night out 1947
by Sally James
lino cold and worn
dad's feet tip tapping
thinks he is Fred Astaire
polished shoes
gleaming
pit clogs in the kitchen
dusty
dad with white face
brylcreamed hair
cash jingling as he dances
me giggling
waiting for Friday's penny.
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Orchard
by Stuart Nunn
Although this was my territory, my special place,
he led me through the ancient orchard
and told me what was what.
He kicked at troughs, shied windfalls
at the desultory hens, slaughtered thistle heads
with the ash sticks he'd insisted that we cut.
Just being there, he challenged me,
and we Stewart Granger-ed round
the derelict swede cutter, swung on the two
remaining apple trees, scrumped little yellow ones,
despite my telling him that they were sour.
Tiring of that just as I was getting into it,
he squared up to the giant bramble clump,
where sometimes eggs were laid.
"Come out, Haigh. We know you're in there."
His shout produced in me the murderer,
the acid bath, the mystery of dissolving glamour.
So when he climbed up on the rackety gate
and said, "Why's this a five-barred gate?
It hasn't got five bars," I was provoked
into my first infant existential blasphemy.
"Because it bloody is," I said.
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