The Weight
it was the lips, blackberry, bloody
and dried up,
I touched them, and I touched
the ribcage the breast the hands the thighs the legs
the stitched seam running the length
and I’m not sorry
the weight of the dead
and the nerve of the dead
I have written a thousand poems for her mouth
and her body
you can’t tell me
she never heard or listened
I see her at the bus stop all the time
*Melissa Lee-Houghton's debut poetry collection, A Body Made of You is published by Penned in the Margins. Her work is forthcoming in Poetry Salzburg Review.
Moon-Walk
did the moon take you
up ladders
propped against
shaken barns?
did you scuttle
through skeletal walls
to find your skull
as empty
as the hurrying night?
did you run, moonlit
through the alder copse
to be imprisoned
by shadows?
where did you go last night
when you closed
your eyes
against me?
*Joanna W Weston: Her middle-reader, Those Blue Shoes, published by Clarity House Press; and poetry, A Summer Father, published by Frontenac House of Calgary.
Moon-Walk was first published in New Hope International U.K.