Four Poems by Christian Ward

 

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.