Skip to main content

Becalmed by Leanne Moden


A Golden Shovel after Mary Oliver 

I wanted to be the kind of someone 

who could always fix things. I 

clung to my competency like hull-side barnacles. To be loved, 

you must be good enough and I was, once.

Back when the sight of the sea still gave 

me chills. Now, I don’t know what will become of me. 

I am a storm-sunk schooner, rigging unravelling. I am a 

boatyard ransacked by vandals, and I can’t find the box 

where I stored my secrets. I am so full 

of nothings; regretful ghostly half-recollections. Fearful of 

everything I can no longer do. Forgetting is a kind of darkness,


a mist that thickens slowly, by degrees. It 

is so much harder to navigate, when the stars are extinguished. It took 

so long to realise what was happening to me; 

on the journeys between the kettle and the sofa, years 

passed. Now, I am left alone to 

make catalogues of the missing parts. Understand 

this: there is no way that 

I can know what is absent. The blank space is this

unmarked page in my logbook. A fog too

heavy to ever lift again. If I was 

still a sailing man, then maybe I could endure this forecast as a 

storm passing. But today, it feels more like penance than a gift.


---


Leanne Moden is a poet, performer and educator, based in Nottingham in the UK. She’s performed at events across the UK and Europe – everywhere from canal boats and festival tents to the Royal Albert Hall in London! Leanne’s latest collection of poetry, 'Get Over Yourself', was published in July 2020 by Burning Eye Books. Leanne loves Jaffa Cakes, trips to the seaside, and hanging out with her cat, Brambles.

Comments

  1. Unknown2 October 2021 at 10:14

    Really emotive poem. I love the line 'there is no way that

    I can know what is absent.' One of likes ponderable imponderables.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Home by Jessa Forest

Home scratches at her shingles with tree branch fingers, pulls the air conditioning unit close to her grimy aluminum siding, and keens an empty song of mourning. We found her wandering the tornado snarled wild three months ago, starved and lonely. She doesn’t know how to take care of herself, you see? We fed her shards of dining room tables, kindling for the fireplace, and cast iron bathtubs clawed feet first. She was slow to recover so we gutted her plumbing, ripped out her nerves, and rewired the electricity. She let the water in every time it rained so we put a new roof on her and let her out for regular walks around the wolf pen. Let her mingle with the vultures, I said, let her feel useful and clean up the dead but no one wanted to listen. We found rot an mold in her corners, infused her insulation with antibiotics, and quarantined her for two weeks while she belched ladderback chairs, sofa cushions, wind chimes, and broken bookcases. She still has her bad days. After feeding time
81 comments
Read more

“Are You So Tired Then, Stranger?” by Ace Boggess

  —Dick Allen, “B&B”    Wind exhausts with its icy fists. Knives of rain wear me down, & leaves in their helicopter swirls like leaflets dropped from a plane. October depletes me, & November. They’ve too much busyness. They send me spinning, dancing, lonely with the rake, the broom. I surrender, collapsing like an old barn, debris of me piling in a chair with clear view of the television.  News is on. It spends me. Talk of politics, also. I’d like  to shut up the voices that fatigue. They hum like a B-flat in the pipes. They bicker & scold, condemn. They expend me like carrying  groceries up a flight of stairs  until I’m too drained to care  which side they’re on. --- Ace Boggess is author of six books of poetry, including  Escape Envy  (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2021),  I Have Lost the Art of Dreaming It So , and  The Prisoners . His writing has appeared in  Michigan Quarterly Review, Notre Dame Review, Harvard Review, Mid-American Review,  and other journals. An ex-c
1 comment
Read more

Examples Of Resilience by Jen Feroze

Look to the city’s forests. Those monoliths and museums, cathedrals and palaces  and theatres whose stories have sunk deep under the pavements, have rooted themselves in the silt at the bottom of the river. Think of the architects spreading sketches across tired wood, holding up samples of mosaic tile, wondering what sort of mark they’ll leave. Think of the tongues of flame, the sirens, the silence before the shells fall. Think of the thousands and thousands of feet that have walked here. The myriad secrets whispered across the vast blue dome, where the apostles keep them safe. Think of the nightingale you heard here that night in November, wrapping its song around St Paul’s in ribbons of winter.  Tiny in the face  of all that history.  Dauntless, nonetheless. --- Jen Feroze lives by the sea in Essex with her husband and two small sleep thieves. Her work has recently appeared in Atrium, Ink Sweat & Tears, Ekphrastic Review and The Madrigal, among others. Her first collection, The C
Post a Comment
Read more