Gregor's Revenge
Sucked bones on the bedroom floor;
last month's cheese, its reeking velvet.
Next door they're trapped by
prayer, white knotted knuckles -
fear making claws of hands,
ears tuned to mandibles...
Corrosive blood bleeds
to its imagined end:
my carapace a mask of death,
six legs to spread across
each face in turn, flexing with each gasp,
each gagging inhalation.
Handing Out Canapés to Bigwigs at Shindigs
Under high white function room ceilings prinked
with chandeliers and piped-icing stucco
you cross the room in a white blouse, black skirt.
Lustrous hair and avatar-perfect skin
remind those present of what left the room
years ago. You offer blue cheese toasts,
crunchy crab parcels, cheesy stuffed mushrooms
to silvery men with all-year-round tans,
women with sharp freckly shoulder blades turning
with expressions of perpetual surprise.
You feel them before you see them, hungry
eyes under tufty brows. You head for him.
Snookered by his wife's, the eyes drop. He pockets
his hands. Someone else's gaze rakes your calves
as you turn. You want to hurl food in faces
but instead smile and say, 'Canapé, sir?'
---
Previously published in Handbook for 2021: The Bread & Roses Poetry Anthology 2020.
