Alison Faulds

Snow

It was late and We were tired of tending

It was late and we were tired of tending to another’s needs, we hadn’t washed
we hadn’t eaten,
we drove without talking
through stark other worlds of thick white cloud,
came out the other side, rising as if from frothing waves
to the dark
and the distance
and the hills with their manes of trees

i was still in the where we’d come
tired eyes going over and over the same sentence, you
called me your slave, however you meant it jokingly, it
did not swallow well with me
it was
one mouthful too many
stuck in my craw
rose in my gullet with thorns
spread like buttercups across the lawn, tangling the order of my thoughts

no more than object to you all along

cloud thirty one

and all at once
on a bend
there was a bump and a shudder
as we trod awkward somehow on the ground
the sound
of something being squashed

of course we turned around, we knew
it was not an apple, or a potato, an ear of fallen corn or a bit of wood
it had a softer sound.

It was a rabbit,
flat from its waist to its tail
as rolled out dough,
dragging and clawing with its arms,
squealing
and something that shouldn’t have been seen
gleaming wet and hanging out behind him.

Turned its face to look at us as we accelerated
and for a moment
I saw some ghastly consciousness in those eyes

a moment later
we had snuffed out its life.

Jesus by the side of the road, Ohio

They couldn’t tell,
The people who drove by, they couldn’t decide
If he was blessing
or cursing,
or drowning,

or if some many-toothed leviathan
had bitten him in half. They saw

the pastor and his wife
and their high, shiny hair
and their house with too many windows to count,
and buggies to cross the lawns

and in their pockets, jangling against their keys,
their mobile phones
with diamonds on.

Rocket Moan

because of you i give off sparks in somerfield
and the red-mouthed checkout boy glistens
and stutters
and daren't look up at me

and later dies, pooling me into the bottom of his work sock

is the milk not sweet
that you must cut me with stops and
throw parentheses
like gravel from the school bus stop

i am unarmed
whale mouthed
and near divine

and the whole of me howls that i love you.

Poem written in the dark May 7th 2009