1 New Poem

Red As Rosa

It isn’t made like that anymore,
all neckline plunge, in-time white linen,
so slim a fiction as blessing cribs,
and one that could never handle a
crossing of hand wounds tender
for lacing logic of cross town traffic
lights you shoulder with broken beads,

darkened metro rail ticket offices,
you flutter between, dancer’s
grace on way from library stacks
to the pity swirl of paper lace
and chewed pen caps that stain
your face a rose gold shade,
pallid mourning magic through
dawn spaces you treed kindling
brought down from grassy hills
to city centres and sold at the
penny-pound (all I could afford)
straining acceptance of
this single twine space where we

meet as revolutionaries,
leave as shoeshine specters.