What great prompts Clare- thank you for sharing. i don't currently have the headspace to respond to them or any of the questions but just to say Brian Patten was one of the 1st poets i loved and was probably largely responsible for me starting to write myself so i'm with you there!
What great prompts Clare- thank you for sharing. i don't currently have the headspace to respond to them or any of the questions but just to say Brian Patten was one of the 1st poets i loved and was probably largely responsible for me starting to write myself so i'm with you there!
Another fab u lous post. Thank you. My fruitbowl’s overflowing today. Sharing newly prepped fruit poem from Bob Beagrie with his permission.
She Eats a Pomegranate
Kneeling before the hearth,
having built a fire, ready to light,
she scoops up a cluster
of cool, plump, scarlet seed sacks
with her right hand, studies them
tumbled about the creases of her
cupped palm, nestled in the gullies
between fingers, shining translucent -
a pile of tiny hearts, the eyes of a flock
of Victoria Crowned Pigeons,
before tilting back her head, dropping
them into her mouth, like a giantess
devouring babies in one of Goya's nightmares,
and I know that somewhere in her dreams
she has chewed upon whole armies.
They are sweet and slightly tart,
the seeds hard as little skulls and she picks
them out and flicks them into the waiting
kindling the way I imagine a creator god
positioned the first stars in the night sky.
Her hair is all of the shadows ready
to be shared out among substances
each to bear their own until they are no more,
streaked by hoar frost and freezing fog.
She crushes one seed between her molars,
the grinding of continental plates,
scoops another cluster of shrapnel
she has spilled from the burst grenade -
cooled dewdrops of blood, vampire tears
drawn by the melancholy of longevity,
each berry a soul, a sin, a dark lineage,
a month bargained against the summer.
Last night's snowfall has melted,
a foghorn bellows beyond the cliffs,
missiles fall on a penned-in population.
She knows this world is both more and less
than a billionaire's battle-ground and we
are only told whatever we need to know.
She licks the juice from her lips,
pushes the bowl aside, bored
by the taste of the husk-stored fruit,
she strikes a match to set the dry stack alight.
It flares, glows, the tinder fizzles as it takes
and splashes golden light across her face.
Early January's underground world
always requires a women to break open
a pomegranate, to lever out its goodness
with a spoon, to hollow out the casing
until its chambers echo like a seashell.
I watched her do it, grimacing, applying
elbow grease, prying the rubies loose.
Now it's as if the bulbous discarded husk
has grown and encased us, shutting out
the universe with its terrors and tediums;
until there is only her feeding the fire
beside a bowl of crimson berries
and me watching, wanting, hardly
breathing so as not to break the spell.
this is an fabulous poem - the images are totally convincing, and te mention of Goya cements everything together! Thanks, Claire - nice one, Bob!
I’m just getting back into writing as I slowly recover from illness and this post is getting stuff stirring in my head. Let’s see what happens.
I would be an apple,
a Cox’s Orange Pippin,
blush red streaks on green cheeks,
the stem emerging
from its involuted cusp
opposite the antipodes
of its vestige blossom,
plucked and gently rubbed,
and rejoice in the bite,
the macerating tongue
and saliva,
the entry into dark
and unknown tracts
thus repeated till I’m
stripped to the core,
my pips a-shine
in the glinting sun.