Like My Daughter Says

If, like my daughter says,
you are now a million particles
orbiting in space,
may you keep on spinning.
Or else as I look out tonight,
I hope you fall like snow
and settle for a while.

Neil Elder

Louisa Bay Café

The blues merge

lose character

as faint-light tinsels

deep as damn 

into dusk-pools.

Day players,

fold salt-wet life back

inside striped canvas bags.

Parading gulls sulk,

their luminous screeches

jump out, brightly voiced

from nightfall's dirge.

A black and orange tug,

wakes by, checking,

dead shore

for the lifeless

and not so.

Sailboarders scoop

a sandpit fireplace,

slotting beach scrap

between tinder flames,

their barbecue group

enthused and vibrant,

patch a pirate's living,

to the fabric they hang on.

Two women's shell-likes,

eavesdrop the seaweed edge,

hearing distant cinema songs,

where the wrecks used to be.

They glaze over, unnoticed,

and the snack bar

crumples into nothing.

Jerry Pike

Betrayal

With your reassuring hum
I never thought you could be
arsonist or assassin.

You kept my food safe,
my drinks cool,
were a familiar friend.

It was only when I heard
how others like you
had caused fire and death

that I came to study you.
You continued humming
but I was no longer fooled.

A man came round
to change the condenser.
No short-circuit now!

We’re friends again.
I’ve almost forgotten
how nearly you killed me.

Jennifer Johnson

Published in Genius Floored: Uncurtained Window edited by Ruth O’Callaghan