Sunday, 1 December 2024

Three Poems by Susan Wilson

 




Unknown Author 

I know my name is common enough, 

so it does not matter who I am 

unless I become famous. 

 

Only then might you confuse me 

with a namesake who can write 

with an equally original voice. 

 

It’s a voice with lips that kiss me 

with the life of occasional success 

and the death of regular failure. 

 

A breeze of inspiration blows in 

to freshen a pre-occupied mind 

with a talent wider than its own. 

 

Words that flow like water 

are whispered onto the wind 

to be caught by my ageing hands. 

 

Those hurrying hands will argue  

with the neatness of lettered ink  

while mopping up every puddle. 

 

They leave behind a page, dried 

with doodles of spoken spirals 

from an author, still unknown. 

 

Across the Body Bag 

After that failed mugging it followed me home, 

its black leather strap sealed with chain stitches. 

It refused my slip of a grip and my shallow step shoulder. 

I’ll cross your heart and promise you won’t cry.... 

Small at first, precious in the palm like a soft locket, 

it was draped, not hung, from behind my neck  

to settle near my right hip. A place for cash and keys. 

A bag of secrets not to share. My own personal vault. 

 

A mobile phone arrived on the back of a credit card.  

A new front door handed me a jangle of extra keys.  

Pieces of information folded themselves into paper.  

Accessories like charms untangled from a bracelet, 

lucky for me. The zip undone for one hand only. 

No clasping, no grasping, no catching, no latching 

and no flapping at being trapped by an obsession –  

in my defence – I had won a gold medal in security. 

 

Finding Oneself in the Frame 

These brown eyes are photographed and displayed 

while other eyes are naked until the sun shines. 

My image will not last forever. It is fading 

and its frame grows brittle with every flexing. 

 

And so I am here to make a choice – or two –  

from each price-tagged reflection. On a high stool 

my right shoe clings to the rung and the left hangs, 

in hesitation, before finding a new footing below. 

 

I study the shelves. He makes his selections. 

Everything looks the same until it’s on my face. 

I’m Mrs Eyebrows. I’m Brains from Thunderbirds. 

I’m a headmistress in a 1940s Ealing comedy. 

 

Having worn my past for so long, I’m almost invisible 

and those who see me have already decided who I am 

without the embellishment of titanium or acetate 

but today I’ll harmonise two new verses into one refrain. 

 

He says sorry to the bottom of the spiral staircase 

where the boss is still lurking and calculating.  

He’s given me too much discount, he tells me. 

Maybe he whipped him too much on my behalf......  

 

It’s a cracking joke like the bill I have to pay. 

Such expenditure should earn its keep on my face 

by restoring a timelessness and an elegance 

as my skin continues to lack its younger years.









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 WritersSnakeskinRuncible SpoonDreichAreopagusStreetcakeRue ScribeAmethyst 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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