Poems by Cathy Barber

Three Short Love Poems

Image by Sarah via Flickr, CC-BY-2.0.

Love arrives like a cock strutting the hen yard. The sky is clear.  It stays blue. I would stay in bed but for the context. The prose moves forward, or circles. Love arrives like an evening glove, like the field itself. Sometimes not: see Godot.  Where were you when the pool opened for the season?  Why do you interpret that line that way?  The temple is built on liquid ants. Attach rope here; let out slowly.

Image by Daniel Lee via Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Act I: downpour. (           ) sips tea.  (          ) drinks beer.  There must be an overarching theme here.  (        ) affects an air but (         ) ignores her. Rats run after their tails. The elms shed leaves and dirt on the cobblestones, upthrust by roots. (          ) wishes she were home, her childhood home, the one with the swing. The one with a crack in the sidewalk. She mutters a prayer in praise of soup and whatever’s next.  Maybe there is no theme.

Image by Carmen Eisbär via Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Help is not coming. Did you send up a flare?  Heads or tails will roll.  Five miles as the crow flies, six as the pelicans lifting on any handy current event. Once, there was a king who loved gold.  Once upon a time his daughter was…  His wife was…  His kingdom was…  You heard it, too.  Behind the wood shed, bad things happened.  Same old story, told again. The hero rode in on a camel, lost his horse at the track. Never end on a sad note.

Cathy Barber‘s  poetry has been published recently in Slant, SLAB, and San Diego Poetry Annual and is forthcoming in Sweet’s anthology. She is a 2013 graduate of the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA in Writing program. A past president of the board of California Poets in the Schools and a current member of the advisory board, Ms. Barber teaches in classrooms in San Mateo County.  She also occasionally writes a humor and musings blog: Is It Just Me.http://isitjustme-cathy.blogspot.com/