Thinking of Tesla on the District Line
Tesla, on the District line there’s a glimpse
of lights, a whole field of lights in darkness.
I think of you in Colorado Springs,
planting bright bulbs to transfigure the slopes.
Sparks leapt and snapped from your brain’s fiery flint.
And later, in New York, the white pigeon
came to you, a lightning fall to your hands.
Tesla, you couldn’t shake hands with people
but you greeted radiance. I think of you
in darkness, where the lights have no end.
Clarissa Aykroyd grew up in Victoria, Canada, and now lives in London, England. Her work has appeared in The Missing Slate, Shot Glass Journal, And Other Poems and Poetry Atlas, as well as anthologies, and she is a Pushcart Prize nominee. She is the author of a blog on poetry, The Stone and the Star (www.thestoneandthestar.blogspot.co.uk). Find her on Twitter: @stoneandthestar
Quince tree
Pushing rubbish into its bin, a sliver of a broken bottle dug into my fingernail.
The backyard flickers with city blue. The painter’s stroke distances itself from the plumb.
The dream of light and truth slips away, quinces swell on the tree arched with winter.
The stiff angle of his fingers, measures up eye to block. I forget, my blood loss congeals.
Sunlight momentarily cuts through, the leaf gnarled quince falls, harmony transfixed.
Peering over half-moons, sleeping, tight lipped, he lets fall the prism.
Patrick Williamson lives near Paris. Poetry: Gifted (Corrupt Press), Beneficato and Nel Santuario (both English-Italian; www.samueleeditore.it). Editor of The Parley Tree, Poets from French-speaking Africa and the Arab World(www.arcpublications.co.uk).
Long way home
Albert trundles the trolley along the gritted path.
He needs to return to the supermarket
millions of silent miles away.
Scorched light shines on his hunched
and purposeful back. Nobody else
is here to see his mean clarity. He blasphemes
under his breath
when one of the wheels catches
judders
moves on.
His face is red: part from exertion
and part reflected light from the planet’s surface
He will never reach Asda.
Catherine Edmunds: Next year sees the publication of a fully illustrated collaborative novel. http://www.freewebs.com/catherineedmunds/
Note: Long Way Home was previously published in ‘word gathering’ and erbacce 42