Author archives: Pearl

a dry rattle among raspberry canes rainsticks against grasses, air, a puff-laugh escaping thoughts, hairroots of hundred year elms motion quelled blink at the bleak wet-denim-black trunks shuddering stripped of leaves. spring blossoms are ludicrous naive hope yet poplar buds already have nubs swollen reddening nervous system molecularly jittering, tense, release, beneath snow crust, beneath […]

Numbers Just don’t stick in my head. Numbers trip in my head, tumble, collide, a tangled tango of 11 and crossed 7s. They jive but not well switching positions, shifting to cough-sobre, the suddenly self-conscious lines try to rebutton each other, blink up with near-confident smiles in a dishevelled, hastily reassembled, to presentable state, but […]

If I were given a 2H pencil and asked to sketch what I saw of you it would frustrate me to have to crosshatch to capture the shadows of your smooth face between the stubble of your chin and the arch below the apples of your cheeks. although I would be gentle with my lightest […]

Gelato Shop At this, the coldest of cold buffets, a man asks if there is any ice cream. The serving lady spreads her hands says it all is, looking as if she is trying not to look at him like the thicker than cream man she clearly thinks he is. He rephrases, Not sherbet? No […]

night suspends its tent, old moths-eaten sky a mile up, a world wide that farmlight too is gone, blinked out in the dip of road between hilllocks taking father’s key from where I know it’s hidden I let myself in do the dishes while waiting for his return stages told what to change into before […]