POETRY | SHORT POETRY

3 Short Poems

Perspectives on Loneliness

Copiapó Mine[1]

we are well in the shelter the 33 of us

the Atacama underbelly gravid and dank

doves hopped rock to rock into the dark

rosaries worn a bead falls as wings yawn

Invisible Neighbour

On the curb I call home laid flat on a cardboard bed by Fifth outside Shakey’s,

ice pipe in hand, skin scabbed dry like old porridge, bump-rinded, potholed.

We’re cookie-cut all the same on this curb I call home, on this bed I don’t remember.

Sodom by the Sea[2]

In Prospect Park at school times eight to nine girls and boys in kicks and skirts laugh and play.

Out of bracken beds when school bells ring roads fill then empty from the alleyways,

they surface like dead pollock in the Hudson at red tide and march forwards

a promise, a lie

to quit in two weeks, but that’s two weeks to buy to buy to buy.

Thanks for reading! I hope there was something you enjoyed in these poems. Which one was your favourite?

[1] 2010, Chilean mining accident, all men trapped were rescued after sixty-nine days.

[2] A name for Coney Island