States of Poetry Poems

The grass grows longer on the easeway.

A pelican swipes the sky
            towards the seascape we can't yet see,
its webby legs outstretched:
                             & ...

The carpet could be cleaner –
so could the world.
There's too much cayenne
in the soup.
The grand abstraction
is one approach
to the poem, I guess –
so too the eye
of the flea.
I can't even taste
the vegetables.
And love?
Mosquitoes are circling
the light globe –
Norma, dead now
a month. And
after we cast the ...

Perhaps the best cells are the ones we can't kill off,
a persistence of the fittest, although mutation's
always painful. It's two thousand and fourteen,
and I know no-one who has been
uninjured. It thinks in me,
this shadow. I put on sunscreen, and am surprised
to come in contact with my skin.
In the same day, I'm chatted up in a café
by an aspiring nove ...

                                                  winter once more and still
           &nbs ...

for Ian

And suddenly:
the men
are holding beers
and standing round
the trampoline,
and not the barbecue;
turning over toddlers,
instead of steaks.
The women
make the salads.

Fiona Wright

Recording