Today’s choice
Previous poems
Jennie E. Owen
Then tragedy makes children of us all
and in that last moment
the dead shrug, shake
off their boots, shuffle off
jackets and shirts, watch astounded
as their dresses grow and drop to their feet.
Their bags, their glasses, car keys and phones
clatter far away
scatter in rings too far too reach.
They are all elbows and scuffed knees
naked but covered
in primary crayon-box colours.
Every one of them fidgets
in their little wooden box
skipping through their mother’s hearts
blowing out the birthday candles of her eyes
over and over.
This soft reduction leaves the rest of us open mouthed
too small to see over the counter, full
of questions that cannot be asked
cannot be answered.
Jennie E. Owen has been widely published online, in literary journals and anthologies. She is Pushcart, Best of the Net, and Forward Prize nominated. She is a Lecturer in Creative Writing for The Open University and lives in Lancashire with her husband and three children. Jennie is a PGR at MMU, focusing on traumascapes in the north-west of England.
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