“Parisian Roses” © Bonnie Matthews Brock

 

Springtime and Love are Incurable Ghazal

Ask me about splinters. About the old, mildewed sofa we split apart
its wood drew itself into our hands like a driftwood sea split apart.

Leaving any fragment of our time in that house is a struggle.
Voices have a way of burying themselves, even in a memory split apart.

Our neighbour vapes watermelon and lemony- lime spring days
sucking the imagining of uneaten fruits from a chemical tree split apart.

Her blue polka-dot of pretend flames wavers in the garden shadows
at night. Only a pop-corn lung and its mythic remedy split apart.

New neighbourhoods are no different. All places have histories
embedded with one thorn or a million. With lives unendingly split apart.

Poems and friendships can spring from the brick dust of conversations
with strangers. Listen to them crackle from the pods of chicory split
apart.          

The sycamore desk you are sitting at knows the darkness of felled
forests          
and the tap of your keyboard reminds its shed seeds of their agony split
apart.          

Springtime seems lush because it grows from such bareness. Jenny, bare
branches and broken beliefs are catalysts for love to again, freshly split
apart.          

 

Jenny Middleton is a working mum and writes whenever she can amid the fun and chaos of family life. Her poetry is published in several printed anthologies, magazines and online poetry sites. Jenny lives in London with her husband, two children and two very lovely, crazy cats.

Bonnie Matthews Brock is a Florida-based photographer, as well a school psychologist. She loves hiking the urban and woodland trails of “anywhere” (and pausing often to shoot photos) with her very patient husband (and often collaborator), Ted. Her images have been featured on the covers of magazines such as Ibbetson Street, Wild Roof Journal, Poesy Magazine, Humana Obscura, and Arkansas Review; as well as on the pages of publications such as Oddball Magazine, Ember Chasm Review, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, Beaver Magazine, and Lateral. Her works are archived at institutions such as Poets House NYC, Brown University, and Harvard University.