“Smith Creek No. 1” © Bonnie Matthews Brock

 

Glassware

i.            Beneath a broken pediment
        a bevelled mirror, slightly foxed
                          reflects a broken promise.

ii.                            The window latch is loose,
                                        and every wheeze of wind
                          brings nightmares to the sleeping room.

iii.    One green bottle
                                      falls upon the flagstones
                        spilling vitriolic secrets.

iv.                    In the grinding of a lens
                 the clouds of dust erode the lungs;
            clear vision hangs on early death.

v.                                  From the dunes
                          the sea sweeps specks of possibilia,
                                      sweeps silica and all our sins.

vi.    Rippling the sweat-steamed room,
                        from furnaces that ape Vesuvius,
                    the globes expand, moonless.

vii.               This globe is incandescent
                              with the bottled light
                                          of forty-two resentments.

 

Peter J. King was born and brought up in Boston, Lincolnshire (so he’s a Yellerbelly), but now lives in the Oxfordshire Cotswolds. He was active on the London poetry scene in the 1970s, returning to poetry in 2013. His work (including translations from modern Greek [with Andrea Christofidou] and German poetry, short prose, and paintings) has since been widely published in magazines and anthologies. His in-print collections are Adding Coloursto the Chameleon (Wisdom’s Bottom Press) and All What Larkin (Albion Beatnik Press)

Bonnie Matthews Brock is a Florida-based photographer, as well as a school psychologist. Her images have been published in Ibbetson Street, The Somerville Times, Oddball Magazine, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, and Wild Roof Journal. Her work is archived at Harvard University, the University of Buffalo, and Poets House in NYC. Bonnie loves to capture, in images, a very wide range of subjects, and to learn and experiment with shooting and editing techniques.