Recent Poems by Janice Windle
FORBIDDEN FRUIT
out of my reach
a peach
its centre hard, rough,
a bitter rock not to be touched
but the velvet beckoned to my fingertips
my lips felt on them the spurt of sweetness
that a first breach would bring.
LEPIDOPTEROLOGY
Over the silent wings he pored
marvelled at their speckled glory
eye-glass in his wrinkled socket gripped
from the shimmering surface dripped
a shower oif rainbow dust. The ripple
flicker of her flight now dropped
he would contain her fluttering ego
pin her with his pedant logic
She no more a wonder but a type.
HOW SHE WRITES
She wakes, aware
her body still and calm.
Not a finger must move.
Anxiety flickers like a match
dies as she remembers it is Saturday.
Images from dreams recede
before her open eyes.
Her mind instead a screen
where alliterations, banalities, clichés
the whole ABC, drift and fade.
She won't move, won't dismiss outright
those clichés. They start to rank themselves:
some retire voluntarily in shame
their mediocrity confessed,
until only the bravest of the words
team up, form phrases, form ideas,
and then she must break her catatonic calm
reaches for a notebook, writes down
the bare skeleton that has emerged -
or if none does so, pushes back the duvet
and makes a cup of tea.
HAVE APE, WILL TRAVEL
Transportation of a monkey
on a first class ticket
is forbidden by Southern Railways.
I discovered this fact
when travelling in company
with my own Proboscis Monkey.
I'd dressed him carefully,
in robes and slippers,
but the inspector was not fooled,
though I noticed a group
of gorillas
had slipped under his guard.
