On Chinese Patterned Curtains
On Chinese patterned curtains, coloured cream,
Over bridges, men and women walk.
Under bridges, a stream
Flows to the next bridge downriver.
Every time the curtains are drawn for morning sun,
Fishermen in their rows, length and breadth of kitchen windows,
Cast nets to seek their fish,
Silver stitched, on tips of current flow,
Downstream to hems beneath in shadow
To the edges of the known world.
Today, I thought about you,
I was having breakfast and I remembered the stories we used to make up,
About all the people in the window.
Fuck me, was I sad.
I cried for an hour into soggy cereal,
Then wrote down a list of home improvements to do,
Curtains to go, pictures to change,
So that the place was my own, again.
- Brian Sheehan
[untitled]
Sleep pulls me down on a Christmas pillow,
snowflakes cover my ears.
The couch is old, mousy,
smells like my mother.
I dream of school girls on sunny days,
they swing high, higher, higher, and they fall.
The pebbles grind into knees, bleeding, dirty,
crying.
And then my mother. Always my mother.
- Noreen Lace