Released Poem 2: Jigsaw

Jigsaw

The kitchen floor is cold.

It aches my legs.

A girl is scattered
all around:

eyes, arms, fingers,

wispy hair.

Mummy’s high above me,

humming,

watching sky,

paddling clouds of bubbles

with her hands.

And suddenly – did I do that? –

the girl’s joined up.

It’s magic

like the yellow kitchen cupboard

with the bathroom

through its back.

I’m bigger now

bigger than

God.

Sally Douglas 

Released Poem 1: Reunion

Reunion

Remember summer. Hours

of slanting sun

rising like a lever, hot

and long enough to move a world.

                                                                                                        

All the way to breaktime

its dry tide rose behind me,

scorching the slow fields of morning

until all the paths were gone.

You’d pop the silver top down

with your thumb,

post the straw and suck

your milk.

I’d hold back, hold breath:

gauging the heat-gap’s smallest slenderness

between warm glass, damp skin.

Feel the clotting of my throat.

If you were here

       you might

          remember this.

Sally Douglas



Released From Captivity

Sitting on the hard drive of my computer are hundreds of abandoned, unsubmitted poems, shut away there in the dark cage of Windows files. They are mostly not poems I would write now - some are really quite old - but occasionally I get them out and tinker with them, cut out a few words, move a comma, put the comma back where it was in the first place...  And this is not a productive use of time! So I've decided to post a few of them here - abandon them in a more public place in the hope that they will be content with that, and let me get on with writing some new ones.

Watch this space: poems will be appearing soon, blinking in the unaccustomed light. Some might come limping out, but hopefully a few might feel up to hopping. There might even be the odd one which attempts to fly.