QUINCE magazine
a literary and visual arts journal
Two Sonnets
13- “…Unthrifts…”
Love, you are no longer yours… It’s the tragedy I’ve wished for. Having a sofa
too small to starfish and how our spit mingles toothpaste drainwards; the dirt
under nails in allotments- October’s pot dinners, nasty parsnips I’ll plant
then eat– despite it all. The heat of a car in Sunday’s fields, the smell of soap on skin; now
we became the mundane. Like Jesus pushing his stone, furtivity perished: how pollen crumbles
the closer you look and the bigger it gets. We all die and who is redemption,
who walks this apocalypse? But, one ought to be careful with tragedy wished for:
O, that you were yourself, not imaginations spite, the fluke in my side.
I collect the real not you objects from which to build our monument, its shadow.
Mine is a cuckoo soul quick to latch beloved’s hues pacing the window, suffocating
in birthrights of my own closeness; I do not want to I – Leave me in hell,
not myself but monstrous: 2 heads. 8 limbs and a heart. One and stinking- yourself?
Is there some Scooby-Doo trap-door keeping ‘Together’ behind the bookcase,
and not with unexplainable me? Love, a suicide: keep pushing the stone.
15- “…in secret influence…”
A little moment; dinner date memories are pushed against Average Joe’s armpit
all the way to Waterloo. Bodies germinate rhythms of cloth, colour and
a little moment- each person a threat and a heartbeat. Time bombs
wrinkled, tattooed- the whole world in this carriage of lifeblood
frenzied and tossed to increase as plants without hope; they don’t know who you are.
Our hands are platform sweaty, we hold irrespective- what is perfect happiness?
Blooming, rotting relentless as Ad time; I am your lover with paper bag peaches, but
we are painted a smash mottled blue. You cannot kiss my nose and mean it
each time. I trace histories, impatience in hubbub- this poem isn’t for you
it’s about you not happily ever after. A poem, firewood that isn’t a cage-
impossible like your real name. I can eat cheese and onion crisps,
knowing it won’t stop our kisses; You’ll retaliate with garlic, my vampire slayer-
You are beauty rinsing lentils for dinner, the tap multiplies glitter, teardrops;
A little moment. We shall leave no hair twist to kiss in the locket.
