Welcome to Litsy!

Trying to save our marriage, my parents
laid linoleum over the matting
I‘d stitched seam by seam with a curved needle
and glued fake Formica on my deal table
for a surprise when we came back.

Sterile beige smothered our living-room.
How could they get it so wrong?
And how could we tell them?
We muttered some nothings,
and slunk away in different directions.

Let‘s rush up to heaven right now and cling together
👇

Unmentionable

‘Crab lice, author‘s experience of‘
is an index entry you won‘t find
in my not-to-be-written memoirs,
although I could tell a tale or two
about the man who gave them to me
(he left them out of his own such books)
[…]

#tellall #nzauthor #poetrychallenge2018

(Internet photo. It wasn‘t easy choosing something for this quote.)

From the man on a London street wearing toy fairy wings in the first poem, At the Crossing, to the dragonfly in the final piece, this collection is buoyant with flight, including the metaphorical kind. Life changes are viewed from the perspective of advancing years. I enjoyed it all. My very favourite poems are in the final quarter and they are all about insects. There‘s even an ode to mosquitoes. Witty and wonderful. #nzauthor

Our old fox creaks into the garden,
a rusty shadow. He finds a patch of sun,
curls up for ten minutes; dozes.

Then suddenly he‘s bounding into the air,
leaping on imaginary frogs in the periwinkle
and snatching intently at the lawn.

What can he be chewing in his long, long jaws?
I peer from the bedroom through binoculars.
Grass. I shall never understand him.

#poetrychallenge2018
(Internet photo)