Don’t be too hard
on your ex,
who was frequently
faithful to you.
Woo woo woo woo
Woo woo woo woo
singing on the radio.
Yayee yayee yayee yayee
started many years ago.
Not another summer
in a wimple!
Someone roll that lady
in the hay.
Surreptitious
Friendship slips
out the window
when lovers shout
and part.
It may ring the doorbell
later,
when neither hurts
not wants
nor waits.
– – – – – –
Rachel McAlpine
Singing soprano
San-ctus, squeak, squeak, lip synch,
sing sing sing sing.
Pretty bit.
Alarm, alarm:
top A on the way!
Ho-san-na in ex-cel-sis.
O lip synch, squeak, squeak,
ex-cel-sis
squeak squeak
sing sing sing
sing sing sing sing Amen.
– – – – – –
Rachel McAlpine
Shoulder
He’s a shoulder.
Should this, should that,
should her.
Cold shoulder.
That showed her.
He should should should
offer a shoulder
and murmur
‘How do you feel?’
*
Rachel McAlpine
Bliss
One night I shall despise him but this night
he is the great white tame hawk
perched beating at my teeth.
He is the scimitar I carry trembling
down the cliff of my sleep.
One day I shall be ashamed.
I shall speak.
*
Rachel McAlpine
(Title is same as the title of a short story by Katherine Mansfield that inspired this poem.)
Negative space
The charms of my apartment
are negative. Doors deleted.
Absence of rubble.
Absence of trouble.
Wax books (hollow).
Shinto gate to nowhere.
Empty. Mysterious. Bare.
– – – – – –
Rachel McAlpine
Spirituality is not
Spirituality is not
a gift shop.
Not yodelling or mazes
or crystals or church.
A reluctant noun,
it would rather be
a private verb,
a silent move
like go or flow
or sting or stray
or love.
– – – – – –
Rachel McAlpine
Some can only sing in a choir
Some can only sing in a choir.
Some can only sing solo.
Some know when to join the crowd
and when they need to follow.
Some have a Yea-Lord back-up choir
they cannot see or swallow.
– – – – – –
Rachel McAlpine
Once upon a time
Once upon a time there was
a once upon a time
and it lived in a cottage
with a mother and a father.
It was grabbed by an eagle
and married to a monster
and is living ever after
once upon a forest and a time.
– – – – – –
Rachel McAlpine
(Image from Rod and Gun, 1898 via Internet Archive Book Images)
Poems in the wild—Rachel McAlpine 