The Loop
An early morning April freeze and shine
through charcoal-curtained drapery of dread,
by day and night I’m dreaming of the dead.
A brilliant flame will scald returning times
and hiss at days and dates with heat so fierce,
my smouldered scars it will not fail to pierce.
Clouds cast their smoke ahead, within, behind,
a ghost train ride with terrors in the sky
and pain that says paralysis can cry.
Again I’m passing through to suffocate
while breathing in a life where I am changed,
though calendars ensure I am unchanged.
The pendulum will swing its boxing glove
to strike my hours full of waiting tears,
a trickling sound to taste remembered fears.
Race to the Finish
60, 64, 72, 77
not out of breath yet
with each numbered point
where they left their heat
minds commemorating
milestones from millstones
sad smiles at headstones
running slowly as I lead
first off the blocks
in this new heat
the sweat of wondering
where my line will finish
60, 64, 72, 77
their route of sepia crowds
is our technicolour rerun
not a race, more a journey
as we gather experiences
into memory purses
growing heavy with coin
our footstrikes on stones
embroidered with grass
our jumps and our trips
over hurdles and water
as we beg for release
60, 64, 72, 77
but we’ll win anyway
at a point beyond
this world of records
to be held or crushed
by a sleep that refuses
to wake us every one
a contemporary falls
and we all continue on
inhaling and exhaling
until the clocks untick
and the hands unclap
60, 64, 72, 77
passing the 60
arriving at the 64
moving onto the 72
and then the 77
maybe even the 84
a record she still holds
though she runs no more
and with every stride
we are closer to her
and the others who ran
hold their signposts for us
Banknotes and Bronze
A brief handling prints fingertips onto cupro-nickel,
an alloy and an ally, like the rectangular papers,
neatly folded and slipped inside my warm palm.
This modern barter in tokens is a promise kept for now
as the new polymers unfold into faded crumples –
perhaps too thick to last but they still bounce around.
Tended pennies are tendered beside independent pounds.
It’s a coinage practically beaten then flicked, dropped
or rolled like a wheel of your old-fashioned fortunes.
Obverses and reverses are observed and reserved
but I’m only the small fry at the lone cash self-checkout
as the plastic people swim past me like sated sharks.
Blown on temporary highs, the printed profiles grow jaded
and monthly salaries are sweating in fear of a currency
that sits in the clouds. Touch the screen and not the cash.
Hold on tightly to the pledges that were tenderly made
in the vaults of the bank in Threadneedle Street.
Yes, there will always be cash. Promises. Promises.
Susan Wilson lives in East London and began writing poetry following the death of her mother in 2017. Her poems have been published by Lucy Writers, Snakeskin, Runcible Spoon, Dreich, Areopagus, Streetcake, Rue Scribe, Amethyst Review and Lothlorien. Prior to the pandemic she was a regular performer at “Spineless Authors”, a local open mic event. Her debut chapbook is “I Couldn’t Write to Save Her Life” (Dreich, 2021).
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