Clive Donovan, The Taste of Glass

Cleaning Jane's Stuff

Beginning at the top with feather wand

removing corpses of summer moths

caught in a diabolic mesh

their struggles epic but not enough strength

to save her as I lightly flick ornaments

littering the mantelpiece her shells and healing crystals

useless as the burnt stump of this candle's impoverished

wick engulfed with overflowing wax – oh luckless design!

She was so tiny yet her spirit flame was large

I lift the ruby vase she loved

deep red contrasting with pale cheek

pictures and photos covered in fine white

ash-dust of the stars they say where she must roam

finally free I trust – a shelf-full of self-help guides

to deal with next creased and battered

by your invalid chair button-controlled under cushions

an abalone clip for your spindrift hair

the furniture so heavy to shift

and you so frail I carried you

laid you on the carpet there for you to stretch tired bones

 – your last yoga pose – and then you curled and died

the coiled hose of the vacuum cleaner

shudders and tangles nudging your shoes out of proper place

sucking up the wretched laces.

Further details

Kenneth Pobo, Lilac and Sawdust

Breakable

Jerry and Jeff sit on the porch

watching fireflies bring light

without sound.  It’s their

twelfth anniversary.

They date it from when they

met at the flea market, an album bin,

fifty cents each.  Candlelight

and wine, a conversation about

fish sticks.  Their neighbor,

Alice Karshaw, comes outside

And bangs trash can lids together.

Jeff says, “Ignore her!” 

Jerry says, “Maybe I can calm her.” 

That never works.  Last fall

he started a chat with her—

she demanded that he shovel up

dust that blows from their lawn

onto hers.  Jerry pretended to do it. 

Jeff: she’s a radio station—tune her out.

The trash-can symphony swells

as Jerry yells “Knock it off!”  

The guys hear her crying beyond

the apple tree.  Her door slams. 

Lights out.  They sit in silence

like houseplants, rise to bring in

gold-rimmed glasses,

the most breakable ones.

Further details

Estill Pollock, Entropy

Asides to Walt Whitman, where Brooklyn Ferry

Intersects the Seventh Circle of Dante's Hell

East of the moon, dawn's fuse ignites

Across blue steel cumulus

And higher still, a war plane's glint

Its contrail connecting coasts towards Gaza, towards Aleppo

In the Syrian camps, the stink of babies three days dead

In Sudan, the boy staring back at the camera

His belly like a poisoned pup's

And refugees, and terror cells and the thrump thrump

Of Apache rotors, at each blade tip the dust-devil vortex

And shares shifting for dollars

In Brooklyn the sex-slave crèche, the AmEx card

Its golden encompassing fire

Across the Sea of Tranquillity, a shadow

Ghost footprints, a bardic technology remaindered

Out of mind

And we, here, at war's end and where the war begins

The moon a watermark, fading before the starry mass

Its fired hydrogen winds, our skulls

Alight with our shame

Further details

Mark Totterdell, Mollusc

Suckers

Stuck to the tank’s thick wall, she’s still, obscure

behind an outsized photograph of her,

then an arm curls, unfurls a double row

of suckers. You’re amazed how fine they go.

The tip twists on itself, starts to explore

the apparatus up towards her core,

and disappears between her fattest suckers.

Her mantle, velvet-smooth before, now puckers.

You fancy that you see her colours change,

as pigment cells begin to rearrange,

but maybe that’s all in your well-read mind.

‘It’s like my ball sack,’ someone quips behind.

A line between your eye and hers might pass,

quick, laserlike, right through that toughened glass.

Further details