Tag: Poetry

Poetry by Peach Delphine : Weight and Shadow

Weight and Shadow

After Granny passed
they divided her possessions,
an aunt took her best cast iron
painted them with country themes
for kitchen decorations.
The three legged camp oven
I dug out of the trash,
her favorite gumbo spoon,
the iron pot,
potato masher,
her old knives,
black handled from fat,
and the old chipped serving bowl
she taught me to hone them with,
on its unglazed foot.
Pawpaw would say, “if you need a blade sharpened, take it to Mama”
then I came along,
flesh made whetstone,
and taught the knives to sing,
so many tongues sprouting verdure,
so much cutting in those pots,
so much emptiness filled,
ciphers of transformation incised.
An unnatural relationship
is what she called it
before dragging me in front of Pawpaw,
“look at the child’s arm,
look at the child’s leg”
and they both wept,
“Why?”
left unanswered on the linoleum.
Echoing hollowness,
how to say broken,
how to say, “this cut is smoke, this cut is flame, these cuts are sea, this the language of
laceration”
wind of emptiness swimming in the grove,
staring out the screen door
oranges in bloom, bee heavy,
sink dripping, mockingbird
rendering some other bird’s song.
Time does not dissipate
the weight of their fear
still heavy in my hands,
their grief still a shadow

in every reflection.
The iron pot still on my stove,
the spoon in its rest
and every blade in its place,
honed effortless,
glittering book of psalms

Twitter @PeachDelphine

Bio: Peach Delphine is a queer poet from Tampa, Florida. Infatuated with what remains of the undeveloped Gulf coast.

Patience of egrets a poem by Peach Delphine

This shore of conch and mangrove,

Rain, our mother tongue,

Cast down as glyphs beaten into sand,

It requires the patience of egrets

The long glide of pelicans

To endure the loss of your hands

Weight of your body in the warm night

As clock light breathes against the ceiling

 

This weather of absence, so much moonlight

Contained by scars, delicate

Tracery of struggle, cartography of dreams, your words still summon to this shore,

Congregation of spoonbills gathered for tide

 

The shyness of alligators,

The call and response of owls,

A world not yet fallen into shadow

The plumage of night folds into palms,

It requires the roots of mangrove

To weather these waves, long fetch

Of sleepless absence,

Each day a shell curving upon itself

The sound of emptiness 

Coiled within my ear, the sand of loss

Pouring from my hands

 

Follow @peachdelphine on Twitter

Bio: Peach Delphine is a queer poet from Tampa, Florida. Infatuated with what remains of the undeveloped Gulf coast.

Poetry: On Being Awake at 5 A.M. by Stu Buck

On Being Awake at 5 A.M.

some days my sadness is so magnificent
that an acrid taste lingers in the mouth of the night

and i think about the thousand ways
that i might die and i think about the birds

Stuart Buck is a Best of the Net/PushCart Prize/BIFFY50 nominated poet and artist living in North Wales. 

His second book ‘Become Something Frail’ was released to critical acclaim on Selcouth Station Press in 2019. When he is not writing or reading poetry, he likes to cook, juggle and listen to music. He suffers terribly from tsundoku – the art of buying copious amounts of books that he will never read.

An interview with Stu Buck of Bear Creek Gazette

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