Years And Years
The lithe years, to be admired
for their rare vintage.
The mumbling years, yet to come.
And this last year, squatting
like a horse sitting on its hind,
awkward and unnatural.
A year of bone china breaking
and cultivated bloodstone.
A year rattled and rumpled,
my time spent ducking under
a low beam and falling branches,
the others, in their fine apparel,
living sit-com lives of operatic splendour,
affording sentiments like greeting cards,
the likes of I a chimneysweep,
a poacher on the outskirts of civility,
the one they send for to be sent away.
Who calls, but they will not answer.
Unwell
The nurse keeps mum,
tipping out her medicine,
clinical, clean, our maven.
We’ve returned to the womb,
to a childlike state,
the nurse floating cot to cradle,
purring over cures and tinctures,
disease her chosen medium –
something you can work with.
Day becomes night becomes day…
We go in and out of consciousness
as one would when trapped
in a revolving door.
Mummified, I am sedated,
death’s mystery solved –
life is for the living,
and only then the earthen hospital,
the body bedridden in perpetuum.
Sister calling on her rounds
my gracious angel.
Bruce McRae is Pushcart-nominee and Canadian musician with over 800 publications, including Poetry.com and The North American Review. His first book, The So-Called Sonnets is available from Silenced Press.
Allison Goldin is an artist living in California. Her work is a collection of spontaneous drawings from the imagination. The most common link throughout her art are the semi-recognizable creatures scattered amongst and bringing together the surrounding doodles.