Tiger
The
rain is auditioning for a part in The Matrix, slowing down to the
point where you can make out every atom. Distraction, obvs.
Away
from the apathy weaving its way like a shadow-tiger through the bus, pulling up
eyelids like a puppeteer to give funny looks, nudging passengers like bowling
pins, sowing conflict like a farmer for the dead. The rain makes its comeback,
flaunting itself like a Zorro wannabe, slashing windows with its transparent
épée, ready to tame the tiger making itself at home in our ribcages, preparing
to feed on what little light we have to give.
Uprooted
are the trees with forgotten names
The
orphaned trees
made
lyrics
of
their tangled roots,
redirected
rivers
with
the power of song.
How
bright were the salmon's
screams,
how pale
they
made the sky.
The
moon hasn't forgiven
them
since.
Don't
judge me with your owl-faced periscope
The
moon is face painted
into
a fox, chases
away
twilight impatient
like
a hare.
Intwined
they are
says
the watching clouds.
(Why
did you
never
make me
feel
this way?)
Hunting
for beginners
Mum
holds up a pair of shorts
like
they're dead rabbits. Pack away?
The
wheelchair downed my dreams
of
flight like a mallard in Duck Hunt.
I
taste cordite, shot, lead. Every diagnosis
is
another lure, another call to bring
me
to the butcher's block, be seared
until
the blackberry purple flesh is done
and
served with the countryside distilled
into
a vinaigrette. I cough up feathers
nightly.
The Labrador-yellow sunrise
waits
at my bed for me to toss stillborn
dreams, all that I have.
Christian Ward is a UK-based writer who has recently appeared in the
Rappahannock Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, The Dewdrop, Double Speak,
Wild Greens, Mad Swirl, Dipity Literary Magazine, Impspired, and Streetcake
Magazine.
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