Three Poems by Adele Evershed

 

Shades of Shadow

 

Why such a fascination

with things that reach up

like trees and towers and dreams?

 

The sniggering answer would be

our obsession with mighty erections

monuments to a legacy

in granite or marble or earthier extensions

but me I have no truck with

stretching my vulnerable neck

like a Queen about to be beheaded

searching for the long dead stars

you see I can never forget

tall things throw the longest shadows

and somewhere in those ivy clad towers

or mixing with the murk of slated trees

a man with flints in his eyes is waiting

to offer me warmth

but really he only wants to set so many fires 

I could never stamp them all out

Before the Rain Left

 

From the fictile sack of memory we unpack

Those glazed-donut days of summer

As we watched him shake sea drops to bedazzle blankets

We smiled as he glugged happy bubbles down his throat

Bright and delicate as an anemone

Later his yells burst haphazardly into the treacle air

Calling hickory lost sheep and hey-diddle spiders

Spinning his sun-starched body and barking at the rain to go away

We should have danced with him under that last purple sky  

But how were we to know    

Those last showers now eulogized in columns

Went unremarked by us as they were unremarkable

then—

Those Who Live in Glass Houses

 

I woke up last Tuesday / a week after you left / in a glass house / my world turned to crystal / like in a fairytale from long ago / when I still believed / and all our old mistakes / were tinted violet / illuminated / with truth and passion / and suffering / that felt as holy / as any stained glass

 

Under my pained bed / I could see dust bunnies / I’d been feeding them / misery / shredded as my skin / so they’ d grown fat / on my regrets / sweeping them up they frosted over / and my sadness seemed whimsical / like an ornament / taken out once a year / to remind us / there is still enchantment in the world

 

My sorrow hardened / until it was cool and clear and solid / something I could pick up and use / like a red wine glass / or a magic mirror that I looked into / hoping for a wish / to bring you back / in my reflection / I saw / I had changed too / but it was much too late / to stop myself from shattering

Adele Evershed is a Welsh writer who swapped the valleys for the American East Coast. You can find some of her poetry and prose in Grey Sparrow Journal, Anti Heroin Chic, Gyroscope, and Janus Lit, among others. Adele has two poetry collections, Turbulence in Small Spaces (Finishing Line Press) and The Brink of Silence (Bottlecap Press). She has published two novellas in flash, Wannabe and Schooled (Alien Buddha Press), and has a forthcoming novella, A History of Hand Thrown Walls, with Unsolicited Press. Her short story collection, Suffer/Rage, has recently been published by Dark Myth Publications.