The reader

My chapbook Your Looking Eyes launches today. Here is the opening poem:

The reader

In this piece the writer is stuck for words

She wants you to remember the thing that makes you squint

Sucking a lemon wedge

Fingernails on a blackboard

Draw a picture of your eyes

A place where you felt safe

Grandmother’s kitchen, flour on the table

That self- made cubby at the park, tucked between

the trees with sticky dark leaves

Smell the residue on your fingers

The time you ran – was it away or towards?

Whisper the sound of the shoes you wore

And that song, was it early Madonna

or a chorus from The Clash

maybe that opera duet (with the two men) or

the bit of piano concerto that they used for the ad

The one that’s in your head when you wake up

Close your eyes   hum it softly

Art that asks me to do something. Am I doing it right?

Is someone watching? Will they laugh at me?