poetry – five stray minutes

First thing

Published on July 16, 2020 by Allison WrightLeave a comment

I attended a Zoom workshop on creative writing hosted by Open Book Unbound yesterday. We had twelve minutes to write a poem on morning rituals. It is short enough to include a revised version here.

First thing

Kettle’s on.
I greet the sun with obligatory stretching
In the valley, chapel bells chime Ave Maria
I inhale on the first divine smoke of the day
As I look to the hills while
tomatoes redden and pumpkins fatten.
I am the early riser, my feet planted in wet grass
I am the quiet one in quiet time
The dog barks, yet no one wakes
Coffee’s done.

Closure

Published on September 13, 2019September 14, 2019 by Anett Enzmann7 Comments

In front of the house there had been a dead tree. Its bark had long scaled off, leaving it white and bare and raw. A rosebush had fancied it the spot to make its new home and entwined itself around its tall stature—spawning myriads of bright pink blossoms every year, imbuing the air around the house with the scent of summer. There were so many of them that every visitor would get a bouquet of roses, should they want one, and sometimes I would feed one or two flowers to the iguana.

…

I turn around the corner and reluctantly step onto the street. I used to live here. This is weird. Nothing has changed. The narrow street is lined with the same neatly cut hedges, behind which the deceivingly friendly dwellers of this village lurk. It’s quiet, eerie, just like it had always been, back then. I keep walking towards the house, each step slower than the one before—

…and there it is. A low, wooden fence, and behind it the cowering, red brick stone structure, a lonely, garishly green watering can, and a bench that wasn’t there before. The dead tree must have had to yield to a neatly mowed lawn, and the scent of summer has long since faded away.

[214 words]

The box

Published on August 25, 2019August 31, 2019 by Allison WrightLeave a comment

“What this doing outside?”

Cath and Andrea had just moved house. Outside the side door on a narrow strip of cement running the length of the building was a box of papers belonging to Andrea.

“You need to sort it before it comes inside,” said Cath.

Andrea pouted. “What if it rains?”

“Best get to it, then, sweetie.”

Andrea sat on the box for a few minutes. “Bloody hell!”

Then she lifted it up and took it to the back garden. There was a 44-gallon drum there. She tossed most of the papers into the drum, doused them with cigarette lighter fuel, set a match to them, and watched them burn.

Her early literary efforts went up in flames, apart from one of two sheets of paper. She figured that she had sorted those papers pretty well. Done!