Wednesday 20 August 2008

Teatime on Keir Street by Claire Askew

An obscure moon - porcelain-pattered, or pocked
like an orange drawn by a child - sobs its way up
into a purple sky. Somewhere close, a dog barks

beneath a canopy of sun-faded green, is answered
with the human chime of its name. On Keir Street,
a young man folds light-shards under the bonnet of his car;
vacuum cleaners sing from open windows, shovelling
their strange music out onto flagstones. Elsewhere,

raucous bells reel off their repertoire, bathing
the slate-roofed sandstone streets in audible dusk.
With hosepipes out of bounds, resourceful housewives
serve up dish-water to their spluttering plants;
children thread their Meadows daisies into chains,
a talisman. A solitary aeroplane passes, ladders the delicate skin
of the sky - the swallows dive like graceful spitfires; winged stars.


Claire Askew, Edinburgh, Scotland

5 comments:

Crafty Green Poet said...

Claire Askew is from Edinburgh, Scotland, and her work has featured in Snakeskin, The Herald and The Edinburgh Review, among others. In early 2008 she was awarded the Grierson Verse Prize, The Lewis Edwards Award for Poetry, and the Sloan Prize for Short Fiction in Lowland Scots Vernacular. More recently, she was awarded the William Sharpe Hunter Memorial Scholarship for Creative Writing by the University of Edinburgh. She is the Editor-in-Chief of arts magazine Read This, and lives in Edinburgh with her partner, artist Leon Crosby.

Anonymous said...

That is a wonderful wonderful sense of place poem, the sounds and the soul of both place and poem. Instant favourite,

Anonymous said...

Lovely poem my beautiful friend. Amir Elzeni

sexy said...
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Regina said...

Wow, Claire- oh my goodness- what a beautiful poem.
This just took me to another place and time!
x