Swirls shift, 
rotate in sympathy,
lacing threads like weavers,
spinning, both inside,
(and out);
hazy moonshine 
feeds biting bones
satiating in darkened sunshine. 

Rivulets of sadness spill…
synthesising with skin;
misty layers fold
bandaging breath,
suckling nocturnal morsels
as rearing piglets –
snuffling deep in fleshy layers,
proud as truffle towers. 

Clouds of sentience puff,
dispel…

Semblances of consciousness
taint peripheral memories
as grandma’s rhubarb pie -
custard-comfort, sugary-crust soft. 
A maroon edge wavers,
sound-wave happy,
drinking in Sunday afternoons. 

Liquids flow, stroking surfaces
like new lovers:
silly smooth,
clean shaven,
perfume-pungent. 

Desire swallows whole,
chewing tendrils of memories
like an obliterated octopus;
its talons stuck on empty glass
like an absent reflection. 

I fold, enveloping decadence,
inhaling siphoned fumes;
breath in alchemy 
as a held mistress –
heady notes drift, sway
like a tempestuous storm;
misty foam coats my thoughts
in a pretence cleansing

​

Emma Wells is an English teacher and a mother to a six year old daughter. She writes poetry and short stories as she enjoys the creative freedom that it allows. She has been writing creatively for nearly two years. She has poetry printed in The World’s Greatest Anthology, The League of Poets, The Lake, The Beckindale Poetry Journal, Dreich Magazine, Drunken Pen Writing, Visual Verse, Littoral Magazine and as part of the Ledbury Poetry Festival.

Saying “I love you” to someone who can’t hear doesn’t count

It’s there, hidden beneath an olive branch 
Withdrawn, and all too quickly withered 
A lost voice foundered in a remote valley 
Where past transactions echo silently 
Never dormant in the minds of the recipient 
Joyous, a prowling beast of joyous occasion 
But a vacuous space holds for most 
Spoken words displaced 
Laid to rest at the spark of a thought 
Too late to utter, the moment passed

“I love you”, said

In a whisper in the car on the way home 
When you passed 
After the door clicked back into place, 
Your perfume dragged quickly behind

​In anger, sarcastically thrown 
On repeat, repeat, repeat before you answer the phone
During rehearsal in a teenage bedroom, 
A tragic comedy coming too soon

​Me, to you 
The great unknown 

In the future, some will likely say it need not have happened.  Others will say it was inevitable.  History may refer to it as the War for Water, but that will be a misnomer.  The true causes of the war had simmered for centuries, the pressure steadily building until it exploded like a volcanic eruption.  Water merely brought the endless conflict between The Collaborators and the Awethu to a head.   I know these things are true, for I was an eyewitness.  - Bookman

Except for the chirp of crickets and the occasional splash from a leaping fish, all was quiet.  The pine and deciduous trees surrounding the reservoir cast tall fractured shadows on the land and along the water’s edge.  Crouching behind a pair of fallen trees with fan-shaped mushroom conks growing out of crevasses in their gray trunks, I stared at the water.  I couldn’t recall when I last bathed, but for a moment, I imagined feeling its refreshing coolness on my skin.

The life I now lead is unlike anything I could have imagined.  By training, I am a historian.  Before the war, reading, researching, and writing filled my days.  Hence they call me, Bookman.  But now, with matted hair hanging below my brown shoulders in thick black coils, a shaggy beard covering my face, and crusty patches of dried blood on my sweat-stained, mud-caked denim shirt and pants,  I am a freedom fighter among the Awethu for justice and equality.

The Collaborators say we are criminals, lawbreakers.  They whip up fear of us by saying we will rape and murder their women and children.  But such things are lies, have never been true, and are products of their acute paranoia, self-induced hysteria, wild imaginings, and completely baseless fears.  Many Awethu who have challenged injustice; Medgar, Viola, Martin, Addie Mae, Cynthia, Carole, Carol Denise, James, Andrew, Michael, and countless others have been killed.  Breonna, Ali, Ahmaud, Dominique, Trayvon,  Eric, Natasha, Michael, Atatiana, and George are among the latest of the recently martyred.

For many years, scientists had warned that the amount of potable water on the planet was declining.  Those living on some of the continents heeded the warnings and took serious steps to address climate change, pollution, and the other factors creating the problem.  On others, half-hearted measures were taken.  But directly below Canada, on the North American continent, the T.W.S., the latest incarnation of a cult-like sub-group that has always existed within The Collaborators and traffics in conspiracy theories, had disparaged and attacked scientists and environmental advocates for years.  They convinced corporations there was no quick profit to be made addressing the water issue, so it was ignored.

When the water shortage began, The Collaborators, with the T.W.S. ensconced throughout the political system, claimed ownership of every significant public source of water.  Overnight, armed guards cordoned off dams, reservoirs, town wells, water treatment facilities, etc... leaving only rivers, lakes, ponds, streams, and other water sources of questionable health safety unclaimed.​

​Think of all the things to save: 
those sheets of shirt cardboard, 
the Rabbit, rabbits I say aloud 
to no one on the first day 
of every month, the embroidered fabric 
I found in the night market of Chiang Mai, 
pens with thin nibs, what my mind finds 
like a planet devoted to spinning, 
that miniature metal sculpture of a woman 
riding a bicycle the black flap of her dress 
curled from imagined wind in Vietnam, 
pockets of letters, the tile from Istanbul 
symmetrical and filled with hues of blues 
like my daughter’s eyes & her voice in the dark 
at four-years-old, I don’t want to die 
alone, and the fact that each kernel 
of corn is attached to a thread of silk 
under the husk. Maybe the end 
will be like diving into a channel 
with a shore on the other side
that we don’t know is reachable. 
Maybe we’ll carry what we’ve saved 
as we fall into water or become water 
falling or at least feel touched 
by its weight, its glistening, 
that last breath unribbed.

​

To Marie Antoinette, from a Woman Who Also Was
the Talk of

In the corridor back when
                                                          and now
             
               and in the in-between.

He said people are too busy to care about anything
but themselves, but
he was wrong.

The illustrations did you harm.

And all the salon talk:

                                                  Did you hear?
                                                  Did you know?

As if they did.

Sticks and stones.
Sticks and stones.

Later: another woman’s
​head on a spike.​