I’m absolutely convinced, and have been since I first saw them six or seven years ago, that there’s a poem in the stacked logs in our greenhouse/shed. 
Continue reading “there’s a poem in the woodshed”
it’s not unusual
I suppose it’s difficult for journalists to maintain the momentum of a story that continues for months without very much actually happening. Which presumably accounts for the Evening Standard story headlined:
Assange ‘acts like a moody teenager and is hunted by women’
I thought teenagers were mostly moody due to a lack of attention from the opposite sex, but I guess it’s been a long time since my adolescence.
Continue reading “it’s not unusual”
roses
I remember a summer evening
when you brought me roses,
full-blown, blowzy,
stolen from a neighbour’s garden.I laughed,
and listened to your promises
as you crushed the falling petals
underfoot.
Originally published in The Coffee House, Issue 10, 2003.
The old poem is included mainly as accompaniment to the photo, which I wanted to include to add some colour to the page after a number of fairly wordy posts. However, now I’m here and on the subject of roses…
Continue reading “roses”
contradictionary
In a story on 20 Minutos, the on-line version of one of Spain’s free newspapers, The Secretary of the Real Academia Española, Darío Villanueva is quoted as having said:
“El Diccionario no puede ser políticamente correcto porque la lengua sirve para amar, pero también para insultar. No podemos suprimir las palabras que usamos cuando nos enfadamos o cuando somos injustos, arbitrarios o canallas.” *
I find this odd, as I thought the whole point of the RAE was prescription not description.
Continue reading “contradictionary”
July heat
This piece has been in my drafts file/notebook for years and has never really seemed to ‘gel’*. Still, given its provisional title, if I don’t post it today, I might end up waiting another year before I decide to do anything with it.
July
Heat swells to stuff the corners
of the room, tucking itself up
to pad the picture rail, deadening
the walls. We lie at the edges
of a king-sized bed, white cotton
smooth beneath us. You reach across
and touch me. Sweat breaks
under the weight of your hand.
(*perhaps if it weren’t so hot in Spain in the summer, things would gel better, but when the writer herself feels as if she’s melting, it’s not that easy to concentrate and get poetry to its final setting point.)
don't confuse the narrator 