Mother to daughter
Rejection tastes like stale beer,
stinks like old carpets, cup- a soup.
Other people’s grime greases
the corners of a rented flat, floating,
unmoored in some Midlands town
where the rain is unrelenting.
The cream immobile phone won’t ring
postmen bring no mail of any kind.
At twenty-three my misery
settles like moths, eating hopes to holes.
Now you are sad and twenty-three
I offer past as present, grimy with failure.
Meaningless to you, just photos,
flayed rags and eighties pop songs,
dry bundles of words, old stuff
about a girl, who was never you.
Nick Browne is an established novelist and aspiring poet. Nick’s poetry has been accepted for publication by Acumen, Ink Sweat & Tears, Blue Nib, Snakeskin, Archaeology Today, Anthropecene, Wivanhoe, Lunar Magazine and been anthologised in Bollocks to Brexit, Lumen’s Shelter anthology Eyewear’s, The Poet’s Quest for God and in Indigo Dream’s forthcoming collection Dear Dylan. Website: http://nmbrowne.com/