Living Room
I saw the painting first, hung above the sofa,
a pike smiled from a riverbed, water dripped.
The walls, not as I remember, flock filigree.
Mould creeping along the seams.
I sat, rested my feet on a Persian rug.
It undulated. Hovered an inch off the parquet floor.
The porcelain dog barked. Startled,
a brass deer skipped away behind the TV.
A phoenix sat in the grate, blazed and died
on command. A copper stick poked through its heart.
Two spoons came to rest on my lap.
I held them to my eyes, my mother stared back.
Jadine Eagle won the Sarah Smith Poetry Competition and has been published in various magazines and webzines, the most recent being The Interpreter’s House. She has also recently discovered crumbling a chocolate flake on a cappuccino – life changing!