Wednesday 10 August 2016

poetry 2016 / 085

Casting the Future

She falls, her handbag spilling
across the paving slabs outside the library.
Men of augur stop, transfixed
by seemingly random cleromancy.
A red lipstick rests next to a stray button
while heart-shapes sweets scatter, broken,
across the crack in a paving slab.
A child's pacifier next to a cowrie shell,
whale a partially eaten chocolate bar
shares the edge of the water mains cover.
A headless Lego stormtrooper saddled
with a boiled-sweet deformity
presides over a napkin, tampon,
spare pair of knickers
(in case of an accident).
Two ballpoing pens, four keys on an Eiffel Tower
and two-thirds of a human finger,
withered and grey.
She scrambles for everything,
one knee bleeding from a hole in her tights
while overhead, clouds begin to gather.


© Rachel Green 2016


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