A Jane Austen House
Light cradles the water,
water cradles the light.
Cream bricks, so pure as to be disconcerting;
a manicured house – perfect life in a mirage.
Inside the house is the suitcase:
ribbed, tiger-striped.
Move your hands along its threadbare surface.
Dust reeks.
Listen to dishevelled silence.
Open the suitcase slowly.
There’s a gleam of knife,
carnelian stains on its hilt.
Run down the stairs
away from the whimsy of this house.
The thread of my words
start to slacken.
Edwin Stockdale‘s recent magazine publications are the Coffee House, Drey (Red Squirrel Press), the Interpreter’s House, Obsessed with Pipework, Orbis, Poetry Salzburg Review, Poetry Scotland and Snakeskin. He has also been published in Sculpted (North West Poets, 2013).