poems from the lighthouse
Selections from recent and forthcoming tall-lighthouse publications.
Out-take by Brendan Cleary
I was squeezing
the wine box
when you called
in a kinda out-take
from my cool existence
& I’d stamped on it
squished it about
& thought of Adrian’s advice
just cut the corner
with some scissors
& let it slop
so I was relieved
it was nothing serious
you wanted to talk about
not like anybody’d died
not like any horse was running
or you just wanted to hear
the sound of my voice
as if for the first time
Suitcase by Rhian Edwards
from parade the fib
A ventriloquist’s doll –
dangling limbs, a fixed
laughing grin, unable to talk
back, unable to blink without
the perch of your knee.
You fold me in at the waist
my feet kicking my ears,
squeezed in a suitcase
and shelved out of sight
till I wake to the rattling,
the sound of your wife hanging
her blouses beneath me.
The scary thing about those who jump by Emma McGordon
from the forthcoming with nothing to rush to
The scary thing about somebody
jumping from the top of a tall building
is not the fall or the jump itself
or the rush of air that chokes
into being that person’s last breath.
It is not even the man, on his way to work,
who finds the seven body parts
spread across six paving stones.
It is not the sirens that are blue
with nothing to rush to,
nor the cold of the zipper on a black
and silver body bag
or the sound of the bristles
pushed forth and back, forth and back,
until nobody would know of the life
that once saw its last there.
The scary thing about somebody
jumping from the top of a tall building
is the dark they saw
when they stood on the ledge
and looked for the stars,
that maybe they took the stairs
two at a time, or the pile of rubbish
they saw swirling in circles too small
to catch the headlines of that days news.
It is the town that was deserted,
that nobody saw them walk
through the streets or stand at the foot
of the building and look up,
it is the look on their face as they chose
which coat to wear and the way
they closed their blue front door
knowing they had no need to take a key.