Pull up and go
The streets too narrow, the boys
too ugly, mother too mother.
Landscapes made from iron and stainless
steel, gasometers and loading cranes
and coal trains. There was one row
of sycamores and the forest where
acid rain ate the green.
I kissed Heinz in the fire-red light
of the glowing slag run-off or, rather,
he kissed me, and wet and slobbery
it was, and the mirror showed no change,
no maturing; my sacrifice had left
no visible mark. And he told.
I couldn’t wait to get out, re-invent
myself, go where no-one knew
that I grew up in a world of soot
and glowing steel, that I kissed
the wrong boy at the wrong time,
that I once wore woolly knickers
and had no idea what ‘virginity’ was.
And how I wish
I could go home again,
but they don’t remember me.
____________
White Bones
Doves dive after breadcrumbs
the old woman has seeded with
an imperial gesture,
standing on a park bench.
With milky eyes she observes the
swooping, clawing and picking,
the frantic chaos, vicious flutter
of wings, threatening clucks.
I see myself cut open in a field,
vultures picking me clean.
____________
A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm lives and works in Lima, Peru. Author of ‘Tangents’, a poetry collection published in the UK in 2010/2011, her work has been widely published in US poetry journals (online and print). She was three times winner of the Goodreads monthly competition, a new poetry collection (‘From the Ruhr to Somewhere Near Dresden 1939-1949 : A Child’s Journey’) has been published by Aldrich Press in May 2016, and a new collection (‘Peru Blues or Lady Gaga Won’t Be Back’) has been published (January 2018) by Kelsay Books.
Rusty Truck 