"Still, there must be time for this, to watch her—
hands deep into the doing, she’s wedded
to the things of this world.
When she stands, her sleeve slips down
and she pushes it up like any woman at work."
"My friend tells me I need to learn to say no
to ferns sprouting in the daylilies, to sweet woodruff
infiltrating hosta. Need to define what it is I want,
what I keep, love, let flourish. I want too much."
"Honestly you need to access a second opinion on
matters of the present moment without taking
the time to read over what it is you're
just not getting anymore"
"so I look at them and look at them until
one thing makes a mirror in my eyes
then I paint it with the tear to make it bright.
This is why I sit up through the night."
I watched the turquoise pastel
melt between your fingerpads;
how later you flayed
the waxen surface back
to the sunflower patch
of a forethought, your
instrument an upturned
brush, flaked to the grain -
the fusty sugar paper buckled.
You upended everything,
always careless of things:
finest sables splayed
under their own weight,
weeks forgotten - to emerge
gunged, from the silted
floor of a chemical jamjar.
I tidied, like a verger
or prefect, purging
with the stream from the oil-
fingered tap. Stop,
you said, printing
my elbow with a rusty index,
pointing past an ancient
meal's craquelured dish
to the oyster-crust
at the edge of an unscraped palette -
chewy rainbow, blistered jewels.
-- 'A Painting' by Sarah Howe #VerseThursday#TodaysPoem#poetry@poetry
"God ... interesting, keeping
bees in your kitchen ... why
not I guess when you've got so
many flowers around ... they
certainly make a warm sound,
I said a warm sound ..."
"I want to buy a pug and name it Frank
and feed him whipped cream and peanut butter
And laugh at his face, to push Frank around
In shopping carts, let him sleep in my bed,
Say Fuck you, Frank when he farts every night
Of his sweet life of twelve years, then lay him
By the kale and weep."