The Shared Apartment
My house-mate’s wallet was full of cash when he threw it at the sliding
sash, busting a hole, fragmenting everything with the glass.
Colder and colder draughts of Wednesday morning
ricocheted in a strumming bass thudding in with the glass.
The false gold halos of coins winked and plashed at our feet burying
into the shag-pile carpet’s tufts, permeating the room, needling it with glass.
We pulled blunt edged pounds, two and ten pence pieces out
from beneath the sofa and attempted vacuuming the glass.
He didn’t say anything much after that and I moved on a few months later.
The window between us becoming a crevasse shattering with glass.
The cellophane we stretched over the break frayed into thin and thinner
slivers like my memory of what we had sliding into a vanishing glass.
That apartment was in roughly in the middle of town, now cars
rush where we once slept in the room still cracking with glass.
Vote
Can one mark matter? Can one X
be a kiss and affirmation
crossing lips or a voting box?
Can one mark matter? Can one X
change thoughts, score the path people fix
do lives hinge on one decision?
Can one mark matter? Can one X
be a kiss and affirmation?
Fear is a Common Denominator
Stumbling through 5.30 AM
and clasping a Tupperware container –
instead of sleeping – I am saving a mouse
from my cats. It hunches, shivering
amongst looming furniture
fright’s seeds germinating
beneath its fur
scrabbling against the carpet.
I can’t tell it the domed plastic box
isn’t a steel trap where air will expire
spent breaths as blood filled chokes
or that the day will
not vomit scratched-up pain
I can only show it open
alley-ways mazing behind the street
and let it run from me
back to dank undergrowth.
Jenny is a working mum and writes whenever she can amid the fun and chaos of family life. Her poetry is published in several printed anthologies, magazines and online poetry sites. Jenny lives in London with her husband, two children and two very lovely, crazy cats. You can read more of her poems at her website.
You can find more of Jenny’s work here on Ink Pantry.