Love in a Supermarket

Dear Diary (Monday)
We touched hands, briefly
She asked, did I need help with my packing?
Her Name Badge said 'Norma'

Dear Diary (Tuesday)
Love is cruel
Norma has a love bite and an engagement ring
We stopped touching

Dear Diary (Wednesday)
'Every Little Helps'
Back to self service
Bye, Norma.

© Harry Mills
all rights reserved

Love in a Supermarket

Veined, pink

Foetal prawns,

Rich green

Minted peas,

Brush of skin on

A hot day

By the cool

Earth smelling

Strawberries.

Eyes touching.

Cynical jokes at

Pre-packed meals.

Tongues stroking,

By the crusty bread.

Meet and marry

At the checkout

Then the consequences

Will be faced.

© Valerie Taylor

all rights reserved

Ringing the changes

These hard

fruit flavoured

tablet-shaped

sweets

coloured white, 

yellow, orange, 

green, purple 

or red

still feature

a short message

written in capitals 

(the clarity of which is

sometimes compromised)

So no change

since nineteen twenty-eight

save that ‘Love Hearts’

are found in supermarkets

embossed “Email Me”

and “Luv U

24/7”

© Sophia Roberts
all rights reserved

In the End

A Woman in an Interior, Strandgade 30 by Vilhelm Hammershøi

In these deserted rooms that gave us life,

though I summon the words of regret,

I cannot feel the pang.

Do not worry my husband.

My arms will come away empty

when I turn to leave.

I shall leave the husk

of my unrequited love

for our infant Thomas,

behind.

© Sophia Roberts

all rights reserved

The Room

A Woman in an Interior, Strandgade 30 by Vilhelm Hammershøi

Light opens the doors,

Her loss has blocked time.

Her hands rest on
The heavy material of her dress.
There is no breath but her own.
It is a long time before death.

Outside a bird sings
Through the paralysis.

She is unaware
That she is not alone.

© Valerie Taylor
all rights reserved

Room 504

Note: During World War II there grew up a new breed of ‘time waits for no-one’ or ‘what if there is no next time’ song. Room 504 was one of the songs that best symbolise the pleasure and pain under war time conditions.

Knowing love and grief share the same body
I fear I am tried,
tried and found wanting.

I asked
for room Five Hundred and Six,
before you arrived
not Four.

I am too old for a surfeit of mourning.
This is too precious to spill.

Lust cannot wait;
love can.

© Sophia Roberts
all rights reserved

Room 506

Already I have a relationship
With Room 506, for the
Number is imprinted upon my retina as
I search for the meaning through the door.

An old table, chair and a window…
There is a sofa for lying and thinking.
No reality but my imagination.

So it is a writing room. 

© Valerie Taylor
all rights reserved

I notice

coming between us

there are issues of substance

and the lack of them 

© Sophia Roberts
all rights reserved

Underneath the Wiper Blades

I've just retired from MI5
surprised to find I'm still alive
No more dead letter drops 
no more spies
But what's this on my windshield?
I can't believe my eyes
a last shot from the Ministry
It's my form P45!

© William Botley
all rights reserved

Read all about it!

Every morning, anyone

can read the latest

spread-eagled

news on my windscreen:

the oblique messages

written in thin blue ink

on narrow feint A4

worn out programmes

or the backsides of menus.

But only the ghost of ‘Yet to Come’

can read what lies

in the spaces

between your lines.

© Sophia Roberts
all rights reserved