Hotel
by Justin Lowe
irony has left me.
not happiness, but irony.
I am content now, anchored to the sand.
in my dream
I finally tracked her down.
she was lying on a hotel bed,
a double queen with extra pillows,
it smelt fresh,
one of the staff, a pimply boy, came knocking.
her face was awash with rapture.
he was kind,
a hard edge softened by her beauty.
he shook my hand
without trying to place me.
sensed, I think, he didn’t have to,
I bent down and kissed her hand,
the dreamer dreaming,
mumbled something about finding
a woman like her to grow old with,
knowing both things to be impossible,
that she had kept me young too long.
and so and so,
the pimply boy and she and the hotel pillows,
and because
there can be
no tragedy without irony
and so and so,
chocolates on a hotel pillow
Jefferson
by Justin Lowe
I have been doing a lot of nothing, Ben.
I don’t mean thinking,
the unconquerable maze of poets,
I mean consigning myself to a gentle oblivion.
not despairing exactly, not some dark void
that sucks all the colour from a kiss.
what I guess I mean is that I have stopped having opinions,
that I will hold forth only with a question,
not a statement, and a polite one at that,
and certainly not an answer, it is why, Ben,
I have stopped writing these late summer months
while the ears bend heavy,
why my friends have stopped calling
and why I have stopped calling,
because suddenly I seem to be floating
like a dust mote in the eye.
this man of stolid routine,
of predictable patterns of thought.
suddenly I seem to exist at no fixed point,
the world abandoned to its fixed points and its bickering.
this is when you know you have woken to a war.
Summer Girl
by Justin Lowe
OK
so we walked together for a while,
strayed from the pack, so to speak,
tugged at bush blossom with a curling lip,
no harm in that.
she was sporting a charm bracelet
just like my mother’s.
it seemed far too big for her,
but I said nothing, merely eyed
those slender wrists sleek as bottlenecks.
she was sure we had met before.
I was sure I would remember.
I said this with a solemn tilt of the head.
she stumbled into me then over some ancient roots,
angry glassy things clutched against the wind.
her touch was warm, fleeting
like the sand whipping our ankles.
I love those half-hours spent at a fork in the road, don’t you?
or at least I do now, counting back,
those timid footsteps at the water’s edge
before the tide turns.
The Lost Things
by John W. Sexton
cuttings
from the root beer … a stain
spreads through the lawn
the housefly zizzes …
through its windows
we see the blurrity of life
an expanded childhood …
teddyphant
filled up my room
the crunch and jelly of snails
… a snakeskin dress
for Princess Slither
two drops essence of broken heart
one drop vanilla …
Knave of Ice Cream
a slice of space
fell into the Vatican …
Heaven is merciless
Zoroaster, tigers, ice
… the lost things
of Earth
an extraordinary jumper …
Gran knitted a room
then went inside
“… enthnarra logron … ”
the flock wallpaper
picks up a signal
her pearl smile, her bright eye
… a million bumble coats
sewn for her train