Tag Archives: Poetry

Wendsday

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It’s a great pleasure to introduce this month’s guest poet Matthew Stewart, with three poems from his collection Whatever you do, just don’t. It was published by HappenStance Press to their usual high standards in 2023. The background of the jacket is an old map of Extremadura, Spain. The poem Gostrey Meadow was published in Stand. See below the poems for Matthew’s biography. I admire the attention to detail, precision, and economy of his poems: so much between the lines…

Banana

Come to think of it, she didn’t tell us
who’d got hold of the banana, or how,
and we forgot to ask, stunned by the news
that at ten years old she’d never seen one.

She was still proud her class had raffled it
for the war effort, still slightly mournful
at it turning black on her teacher’s desk
long before they drew the winning ticket.

She wouldn’t talk about gas masks, the Blitz,
the doodlebugs (how they changed to V2s) —
but she always recalled her fury
at the waste of bloody good food.

Wendsday

Halfway through the word and the week,
my pen used to pause and stumble,
tripped up by my eight-year-old tongue

and even now I still delight
in having learned at last to swap
the n and d and add the e.

I stumbled, too, after coming
to Spain. Shook off routines and rules.
Let a new language soak through me.

Two more hassle-packed, tensed-up days
till vino tinto y queso
instead of cod and chips.

Gostrey Meadow

Showing my son round, I notice
a father taking a picture
of his wife and son who’s melted
half an ice cream on his fingers
and the other half on his face.

It’s a copy of a photo
in our album. Same river.
Same heat-laden sky. Same roles.
Same spot on the bank. Same pose.
Our trees were ten feet shorter.

Biography

Matthew Stewart lives between Extremadura in Spain and West Sussex in the South of England. He works in the Spanish wine trade as a blender and exporter. His blog site ‘Rogue Strands’ is a respected source for poetry lovers, and he reviews widely for a range of publications. His first full collection was The Knives of Villalejo (Eyewear, 2017). Before that, there were two pamphlets from HappenStance:
Tasting Notes (2012) and Inventing Truth (2011).

My family and other birds

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It’s a great pleasure introducing this month’s guest poet: Rod Whitworth. We first met, probably, a good decade or so ago. His poems have been widely published and successful in competitions. One of these, the poignant Demobbed was featured here on 30 May, 2021. Rod recently launched his first full collection My family and other birds. I’ve chosen a selection of poems on the themes of family and birds and, of course, jazz.

Tandem in Holland

On that day, your smile
hung like a sunrise
over the polders.

And on that day, your voice
greeted me like blackbirds
singing to claim and to yield.

And on that day, your touch
thrilled like a breeze
from the pine trees.

And that day brought the knowledge
of itself and knew
that it was this day.

Portrait of my grandfather, accompanied

The daft smile, wide as a spiv, tells us
Sunday afternoon, after a slow left-arm morning
and Chester’s Best in the Cotton Tree.
You’re sitting in the sun on the donkey-stoned
front step of Number 51
in undone waistcoat, collarless shirt, felt slippers,
a Capstan Full Strength drooped from a trailing hand.
This is happiness: transported
from your brother Llewelyn who never left the Somme,
from crying all the way home after delivering jam and marmalade
to shops in Coventry the day after it was blitzed.

On your right knee: me, plump
as a queen’s cushion, wide-eyed,
in Auntie-Louie-knitted rompers,
not knowing any of this.

Names you know, names

It was Rod, the other one,
the one who listened to American radio
on his Communist dad’s short wave,
who, one bright April morning
between the 53 bus stop and school, said
You’ve got to listen to this bloke,
a pianist, Thelonious Monk.
He’s something else. Another world.
I told him no-one could be called
Thelonious Monk. It took me
two years to find out he was right,
on both counts. What he didn’t know though
was that Monk’s middle name was Sphere.
By the time I knew that,
the car Rod was travelling in
had crashed into the lamp post.

One for…

He was walking away
when I noticed the wings.

Furled they were, but still
visible against the dark blue

hoodie. I don’t believe in angels
but it does make you think.

I called him back, asked him to intercede.
You’re asking a lot from a magpie

he croaked, then flew off.
Made me feel sorrowful.

I wished he’d had a friend.

Biography

Rod Whitworth was born in Ashton-under-Lyne in 1943, and has done a number of jobs, including teaching maths (for 33 years) and working in traffic censuses (the job that kept him on the streets). He currently works as a medical rôle-player. Rod has been writing poetry for a few years and has had work published in a number of journals and anthologies. His first collection, My family and other birds, was published by Vole Books in 2024. He now lives in Oldham and is still tyrannised by commas.

To Live Here

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This month’s guest slot is for poems from To Live Here, an anthology of haiku published by The Wee Sparrow Press. The Press was founded by Claire Thom. 100% of the proceeds of their anthologies are given to charity.

The anthology is edited by Giorgia Di Pancrazio & Katherine E Winnick. The lovely cover and illustrations are by Scottish artist Colin Thom.

To Live Here is “A collection of haiku on the theme of home, which explores the many facets of human experience, from the mundane to the sublime. Featuring the work of talented poets from around the world, this anthology invites readers to reflect on the beauty and complexity of the world we inhabit.”

Salford Loaves and Fishes, a charity supporting the homeless, has already received over £600. The anthology is available through Amazon – ISBN 9788409528165. I’m grateful to Francis Attard and Julie Mellor for permission to share their haiku.

sandy beach
turtles lay clutches of eggs
off-shore breeze

Francis Attard, Malta

three cornered field
the generations
who farmed here

Julie Mellor

on the verge a stork stepping out

Fokkina McDonnell

Forgetting My Father

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Photo credit: Naomi Woddis

It’s a great pleasure to introduce our December guest poet Jill Abram. Jill and I met several years ago on a writing workshop. I have chosen four poems of Jill’s pamphlet Forgetting My Father. The beautiful cover was designed by Aaron Kent and was inspired by rhododendrons in the last of the poems. You’ll find Jill’s biography and links after her poems.

This is the last post of 2023: Season’s Greetings to you; thank you for your support.

How To Belong

At Jewish youth club we all wore
Rock Against Racism badges
and danced to Glad To Be Gay –
girls in one ring, boys in another.

They ate ham sandwiches when
their parents weren’t looking yet
scorned me for Smokey Bacon crisps
and going to school on Yom Kippur.

The Evangelicals lured us into their
church hall with ping pong then tried
to keep us with singing and prayers
and Jesus. They wanted all of us.

Words Are Not All We Have

Words are all we have. – Samuel Beckett

Don’t get into debt with anyone but me!
Dad’s sole instruction when he left me
at university. When we did the reckoning
he took the hit on my car’s depreciation.
And because I’d sold it, he drove 300 miles
in his to bring me and all I owned home.

We argued over SI units once. I fetched all
my A-level text books, showed him proof
after proof. He wasn’t having it. He’d grown up
with imperial; I knew metric, and that I was right.
Next day he brought a page he’d found at work,
looked at the floor as he handed it to me: I withdraw.

Now he can’t say anything because of the tube
in his throat and maybe – we’ll know when they
remove it – that blood clot. When I try to leave
his bedside, he grips my finger and won’t let go.

My Sister Is


a gold coin:
She is precious.
Her style is simple and elegant.
I’d like to exchange her
for something of equal value.

an alarm clock:
Controlled by radio from Rugby,
accurate to a fraction of a second.
If she were by my bed, she’d go wrong
and wake me at 5am.

a mid-morning beverage:
Green tea fits her philosophy,
black coffee her personality.

a steamroller:
She’d say that was more appropriate
for me, being heavier than her.
I’d say she has a greater power to crush.

a bear:
Will she be a ferocious, mama grizzly
or cuddly teddy? We never know
until she gets here.

a window:
Round, square or arched?
Hmm, certainly arch

a hand thrown pot:
Finest china drawn out thin, glazed
in lustrous copper and cobalt. In the kiln,
a bubble formed on her rim.

a coffin:
Made to measure, lined with silk,
a velvet cushion, and no shortage
of people to carry it.

Slow Orphaning

Images slide across my lock screen at random:
hot pink rhododendrons at Kew last May,
glasses of rum and ginger on a hotel balcony.
Here’s Mum, pensive and beautiful as she
gazes at the skyline from a Thames boat
when she came to see me. The last time
I tried to visit her, she said she was busy.

Dad teeing up on the ninth at Dunham
in an orange cagoule. Rain never held him back.
A heart attack slowed him. A bypass stopped him
at a stroke. His body survived fifteen years
while his mind died and I grieved for
so long. So long I was surprised
there were still tears for his funeral.

Biography
Poet, producer and presenter, Jill Abram is autistic, has Jewish heritage and lives with fibromyalgia. She grew up in Manchester, travelled the world and now lives in Brixton. She has performed her poems, which have been widely published, across London and beyond, including Ledbury Poetry Festival, StAnza, Paris, USA and online. She was Director of the influential collective Malika’s Poetry Kitchen for twelve years. Jill’s debut pamphlet, Forgetting My Father, was published by Broken Sleep Books in May 2023. Jill has a newsletter. You can sign up via her website or directly via this link and here is the link to Broken Sleep Books, if you want to buy a copy of the pamphlet.

Carnation Lily Lily Rose

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It’s a great pleasure to feature four poems from our guest poet Jane McKie. Her collection Carnation Lily Lily Rose was published by Blue Diode earlier this year. The title and title poem are after John Singer Sargent’s painting of the same name. Each word is also the heading of the four sections of the book.

The collection includes a range of poetic forms and shapes: prose poems, a concrete poem, long and thin poems. We meet couplets and triplets, striking titles: Cairn to a Dead Biker, X-Ray of a Deer’s Skull. The poems crackle with energy and vitality. The book is ‘a hymn to all the different kinds of connective tissue that lightly, but firmly, weave us into the fabric of our own and others’ lives’. (David Kinloch).

Lord, Make Me an Instrument

Here the clouds outrun land: greyer, fleeter,
casting their shadows on the estuary and making
mud move at their speed, blown rather than
fixed, flexing with light / dark / light / dark,
sea-blite at the edges to catch the odd discarded
fag butt. Sea pea, clover, yellow vetch.

Further out, the flattened eelgrass – a trammelled
thatch without the tide; with it, upstanding,
like proud speech. Into this landscape creeps
a man following redshank, black-tailed godwits;
watch him huddle – glimmer of a struck match.
Winged souls call to the crackle of his breath.

Sand

Tonight, I’m in an arbour designed
by an artist who moonlights as a gardener.

Our host’s aesthetic sixth sense is spot on:
look how the roses jostle the frame,
how the lattice pins them like pretty moths.
A drink in one’s hand is compulsory.

And we guests are laughing, playing up
a hunger that may be on the wane,
but holds us, tonight, as snug as palms
around glasses. It is brilliant, this garden,
and familiar, as if it is not a garden at all
but a gateway, and we are not guests
at a middle-aged party but school-leavers
on a promised, delicious brink.

Tonight, if you sliced me open,
you would find a swirl of glitter:
all the shades of the sand
at Alum bay squeezed
into one miniature glass lighthouse.

Antigravity

They hover along pavements, barelegged,
on Mini Micro scooters, a flock of them –

the best of us. Hovering in shirtsleeves, hearts
and mouths open before guile sets in.

Don’t they feel the cold? Hovering to class
like motes in light.

On this unbearable, ordinary day, we mothers
can’t stop them lifting off the ground,

their small hands to their mouths
as they giggle, spitting out milk teeth,

growing too quickly. Catch onto
their waistbands and don’t let go.

Harness

I think of the invisible harness that hitches us, one to the other,
how it signifies both baggage and provision;

how, in the past, I have slipped the harness
and tested freedom, finding it overrated;

how mood is a harness, like gravity, pitching our orbits
a little off-kilter;

how sometimes the harness pinches and we are inclined
to worry it, fidgeting, even to tear at it;

how we trust the harness to repair itself like skin.

Biography

Jane McKie works as a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Edinburgh. Her first collection, Morocco Rococo (Cinnamon Press) was awarded the 2008 Sundial/Scottish Arts Council prize for best first book of 2007. Recent collections include Quiet Woman Stay (Cinnamon Press, 2020) and Jawbreaker (2021) which won the Wigtown Poetry Festival’s Alastair Reid’s Pamphlet Prize 2021.

Jane, as a member of the Edinburgh-based Shore Poets, facilitates poetry readings and music. She is interested in collaboration across forms, writes with 12, a collective of women writers, and with Edinburgh’s genre spoken word group Writers’ Bloc.

Austere beauty

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I was deeply saddened to learn of the death of Louise Glück. She is, perhaps, best known for her poetry collection The Wild Iris, which was published in 1992 and for which she received the Pulitzer Prize. The title poem opens the book: At the end of my suffering / there was a door.

Her 2014 collection Faithful and Virtuous Night, also from Carcanet, gave me both comfort and confidence as I was struggling to complete the manuscript of Remembering / Disease. ‘You enter the world of this spellbinding book through one of its many dreamlike portals, and each time you enter it’s the same place but it has been arranged differently.’ Each time I entered this world, I felt closer to home.

Glück was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2020 for her ‘unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal’.

The title poem Faithful and Virtuous Night is a long poem, over 10 pages, consisting of short stanzas. It ends:

I think here I will leave you. It has come to seem
there is no perfect ending.
Indeed, there are infinite endings.
Or, perhaps, once one begins,
there are only endings.

Hard Drive

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It is a great privilege to share Paul Stephenson’s poems here. His debut collection was published by Carcanet in June this year. See the end of this post for Paul’s biography and details of his three poetry pamphlets.


When his partner suddenly died, life changed utterly for Paul Stephenson. In Hard Drive a prologue and epilogue hold six parts of almost equal length. These poems take the reader through the journey of grief: Signature, Officialdom, Clearing Shelves, Covered Reservoir, Intentions, Attachment.


‘A noted formalist, with a flair for experiment, pattern and the use of constraints’, Paul also has a talent for intriguing titles: Other people who died at 38; Better Verbs for Scattering; We weren’t married. He was my civil partner.


There is a great variety of form: erasure poems, use of indents and columns, haibun, prose poems, alongside the narrative poems which range in length from three lines to the five-page poem Your Brain. Unfortunately, WordPress can’t do justice to the poems which need formatting.


I have chosen four poems from four parts: What Jean saw, Battleships, On mailing a lock of his hair to America, belatedly, and Putting It Out There. Battleships is a particular favourite – precise and poignant.

What Jean Saw


Through the letterbox
the little bald patch of you
asleep on the floor

Battleships

I must sort his room, a room as full
of ships as any room could be, clear up
the battle waging on open seas.

I imagine them, christened one summer afternoon,
careering down their slipway
ironclad onto polished parquet.

Red and blue ships strewn – mile-long,
laden with guided missiles,
locked onto my feet, closing in on my knees.

Picking up a ship, I cup it, poor target,
slide a knife in the cracks
between floorboards to extricate others.

No mayday for these navies in trouble,
these heavily manned fleets,
their broadsides struck, hulls torn and listing.

For the scuttled and sunk, damaged
and wrecked, the ships reported missing,
I bag them up and think charity.

No more games here.
No more torpedoes in crossfire – hit!
His room a tidy horizon, the radar blank.

On mailing a lock of his hair to America, belatedly

Would his hair be worth it?
Would his hair provide comfort?
Would his hair cause upset?
Would his hair be an act of violence?
Would his hair destroy their day?

Would his hair survive the journey?
Would his hair have to declare itself?
Would his hair be seized?
Would his hair still shine?
Would his hair be hair after all this time?

Putting It Out There

So here I am worrying myself to death
about commodifying your death,
arranging and sequencing your death,
curating the left and right pages of your death,
deciding which parts of your death to leave out.

Here I am again, giving a title to your death,
choosing an attractive cover for your death,
(will your death have French flaps?)
writing intelligent-sounding blurb for your death,
thinking how we might best promote your death,
who might best be willing to endorse it.

Still me, waiting to be sent a proof of your death.
I’ll need an eye for detail to check your death for typos.
I’ve got to get it right – the finger-feel,
the texture of the paper of the pages of your death,
ensure a sharp jet black for your death’s ink.
(I’m wondering about the numbers in your death’s ISBN).

Before I sign off on your death – your death done,
and wait for a box with hard copies of your death
and organize things to launch your death – finally,
then wait, for reviews of your death (hopefully considered),
to be told how well your death has sold.

Biography

Paul Stephenson studied modern languages and linguistics, then European studies. He has published three pamphlets: Those People (Smith/Doorstop, 2015), which won the Poetry Business pamphlet competition; The Days that Followed Paris (HappenStance, 2016), written after the November 2015 terrorist attacks; and Selfie with Waterlilies (Paper Swans Press, 2017). He is a University teacher and researcher living between Cambridge and Brussels.

website: paulstep.com / Twitter: @stephenson_pj / Instagram: paulstep456

paper crown

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This is my 300th blog post. Many thanks to all the blog’s followers, also for your likes and lovely comments. They are much appreciated. I’m taking a break from weekly blogging: I need to ‘fill the well’ – take myself out to find poems and art on the streets of The Hague, get inspired and fired up again. I’m celebrating the 300th post in the company of Cecile Bol – our August guest poet.


Cecile is also the organiser of the Poetry Society’s Groningen Stanza. When I moved back to The Netherlands , I was fortunate that their meetings were on Zoom due to the lockdown. It was great to meet Cecile and other members of the Stanza in person earlier this year. The hotel where I stayed is just a few houses down from the literary café De Graanrepubliek where they meet.


I have chosen three poems from Cecile’s chapbook Fold me a Fishtail. Read more about Cecile and the book below her poems.

yet you speak of resilience

there are things that make me sink back into the grave
(red on black, stardust freckles, knee socks, foxy wrists)
inside Plato’s cave, where moving shadows are safe

I saw a flowered brown tie turn into a snake
woke up crying, your shoulder blade stuck to my lip
there are things that make me sink back into the grave

same table, same cheap wine, same talk, another day
you pull me close as if you’re not pushing me in,
inside Plato’s cave, where moving shadows are safe

like the cute demon I asked how I should behave
– he said ‘always choose slyly between loud and still’ –
there are things that make me sink back into the grave

they nibble at my feet, ask if this time I’ll stay
(petrol candy, flawed magic, and plenty to kiss)
inside Plato’s cave, where moving shadows are safe

I seep through layers of earth, call out all their names
yet you speak of resilience as if we can win
there are things that make me sink back into the grave
inside Plato’s cave, where moving shadows are safe

paper crown

a cut-out crown is still a crown
for a girl on a stolen horse
I would have swapped our sanities
to see her hair become lost in
rose horizons, saddlebags filled
with boxes of chocolate sprinkles

I’d been chasing robber children
long before we met – and I will
stick with this selfish travelling
until or well beyond my death
but she – she bore whole galaxies
sprinkled into maps on her skin

in my inside pocket you’ll find
scissors, tape and golden paper
the day I borrowed her reindeer
I thought in time she’d ride my horse
instead I stop at roadside shrines
and eat chocolate sprinkles daily

robber child: arguably the most interesting character in H.C. Andersen’s story The Snow Queen is the unnamed little robber girl

Krasokouloura

I should have made them milk
and bread, while they were still in bed –
instead, I impulsively fired up
the electric oven – as always, procrastinating –
to bake twenty ring-shaped Greek cookies
with things lying around the cupboard.

Flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon,
salt, ground cloves, some olive oil
and another glass of white wine.

I should have written them a note,
but I’m that cat; as always, capitulating
to curiosity – I had to taste one, still warm,
curled up on the windowsill – new sun,
please, tell me what skills it would take
to achieve immaculate roundness.

Biography:
Cecile Bol is a Dutch writer with a small family and a big edible garden in the north of the Netherlands. She doesn’t have an MA in Creative Writing, because things like that don’t exist in her country. She does, however, earn her money as a self-employed copywriter. The somewhat well-known poet Helen Ivory describes Cecile’s work as ‘like finding snakes in your strawberry patch’. Cecile enjoys incorporating fairy tales and popular culture in her poetry, and her poems often have a slight erotic edge. Cooking (mostly Greek) food is her means of meditation. Cecile owns 57 different kinds of herbs and spices of which cumin and dill are her favourites.


Cecile’s debut chapbook Fold me a Fishtail was published by UK-based Selcouth Station Press in 2022 (Sadly, Selcouth Station Press ceased to be in 2023). So what’s Fold me a Fishtail about? Cecile: “I sometimes wonder whether Disney’s Ariel misses her mermaid tail, now that she’s the legged wife of prince Eric. Isn’t she way too curious and free-spirited for a conventional family life? Or is that just me? That feeling chained to a husband, toddler and suburban lifestyle was enough to drive me dangerously crazy? Fold me a Fishtail is a collection of mostly confessional poetry about a long journey into, through and out of (?) the dark.”

Favourite objects

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Credit: geralt via Pixabay

A prose poem of mine was published in # 185 of orbis magazine. The inspiration may, in part, have come from reading the long prose poem 12 O’Clock News by Elizabeth Bishop.

It refers to eight items in her room, with a gooseneck lamp standing in for the moon. The first section ends ‘Visibility is poor. Nevertheless, we shall try to give you some idea of the lay of the land and the present situation.’

I love the humour in it. Here is the description of a pile of mss: ‘A slight landslide occurred in the northwest about an hour ago. The exposed soil appears to be of poor quality: almost white, calcareous and shaly. There are believed to have been no casualties.’

Bishop’s prose poem changes tone as it continues. With the final object, ashtray, we’re suddenly in a warzone; there are dead bodies, corrupt leaders are mentioned. It’s even more devastating because of the ordinariness of the object.

Animate and inanimate objects relating to J Abraham

The favourite mug

Waisted, Nile green, curved handle, fit for purpose: dishwasher proof; delicate gold lettering The Frog Prince, on both sides: black frog, gold crown. I admit to one shadow side: pangs of jealousy when on Sundays I see him take out the old cup-and-saucer. Mr Abraham is a bachelor, but tells visitors he has been married twice, to the same woman. In fact, he is an inspector of taxes.

The handkerchief

With a yellowing initial I do not get many outings. It was a proud moment last Friday, row H in the stalls, aisle seat. A Bruckner motet. That gentleman called ‘J’ keeps concert programmes in a special box file. Used to sing in a choir, but has given up on Him upstairs.

The ashtray

My life as a masochist, the short version. I am clean and I have barely any burn marks. To make matters worse, I was moved to the shed. Technically, it’s a Summer House, but no windows, so no tax is payable. He should be told that non-smokers too can die of lung cancer. I am praying for a relapse.

The moustache

Hegel, Kant, Wittgenstein, Hume, Locke, Rousseau, Voltaire. Cogito, ergo sum. Sum, ergo cogito. A butterfly can remember its life as a chrysalis, and I have full cognisance at cellular level of my previous manifestations. JA grows me specially, once a year, for a charitable purpose. This year I have a Teutonic shape. The flecks of grey soften my appearance. Mug, handkerchief, ashtray – they will end up in a grey bin, or at The Red Cross. I will have the last laugh.

The newspaper cutting

Protected by a plastic wallet, I’m a piece from The Guardian 08.05.12. How we made … Break Down: Artist Michael Landy on how he and his collaborator destroyed all 7,227 of his possessions. Need I say more?

Had I not been lonely …

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Matthew Sweeney, 2006


When I saw a post by ‘Albert’ on Twitter with this quote by L S Lowry: Had I not been lonely I would not have seen what I did, it reminded me of this poem by Matthew Sweeney. A fine ekphrastic poem that moves beyond description, as it enters into dialogue with the artist about their work.

I have a few ekphrastic poems that need expanding in some way, so I’m going to do some research and explore how I could incorporate the artist’s own words into those poem. Is this something you might do with your own writing? If you’re a painter, photographer, sculptor, do poems inspire you?


Here are the two parts of Matthew Sweeney’s poem Dialogue with an Artist

Matthew died in 2018, his poems are still with us.

Dialogue with an Artist

THE LONELY
Incorporating the words of L.S. Lowry

I used to paint the sea, but never a shore,
and nobody was sailing on it. It wasn’t even
the sea, it was just my own loneliness.

It’s all there, you know. It’s all in the sea.
The battle is there, the inevitability of it all,
the purpose. When I switched to people

they were all lonely. Crowds are the
loneliest thing of all, I say. Every individual
in them is a stranger to everyone else.

I would stand for hours in one spot
and scores of little kids who hadn’t had
a wash for weeks would group round me.

Had I not been lonely, none of my work
would have happened. I should not have
done what I’ve done, or seen what I’ve seen.

There’s something grotesque in me and I
can’t help it. I’m drawn to others who are
like that. They’re very real people. It’s just

I’m attracted to sadness and there are some
very sad things. These people are ghostly
figures. They’re my mood, they’re myself.

Lately, I started a big self-portrait. I thought
I won’t want this thing, no one will, so
I went and turned it into a grotesque head.

MEMO TO LOWRY

You’re right, there are grotesques who shine
a dark light that lures us like how the sirens
tried to lure Odysseus, and yes, maybe we
ourselves are among the grotesques, but
there are also the beautiful who, if we’re
lucky, save us from ourselves, and validate
the sun’s light, and maybe also the moon’s.