Poetry

Robert Doisneau

By

Natalie Crick

Single White Female

Don’t you think I’m pretty?

I’ll do anything you want.

He always seems to know what I am thinking.

I’d like to see him again.

She lives in the attic,

Lying awake all night

With her deaf daughter.

It is very cold up there.

Does anyone know anything about her?

She was a lovely girl.

She was so different.

I am afraid when I am alone.

One day when she was a little girl

She ran away from home.

Forever and ever.

People do bad things all of the time.

When her Mother finally died,

She disappeared completely.

She cried at the funeral.

I just wanted you to know.

“What happened to your face?”

I did not know what else to do.

It was she or me.

Do you think I’m a bad person?

Can you act normally?

Time has ran out.

They took her away.

“We need to take you to hospital.”

I think about you every minute of every day.

Killing Monsters

The strange danger

Of death.

We gather outside where

Red balloons are moving

Everywhere

And I am saying

“Your hands look older

“Than they were yesterday”.

Birthday cakes and smiles.

What is this?

Oh, no thank you.

I am too ashamed.

Inside may be the unspoken that

I lack.

Onyx drops looking at me

Looking at you.

When I run my fingers down your spine,

You are soft, like

Babies’ fingernails.

Loll back:

A bloated body on foreign seas.

You are splayed out like a skin.

Laughter drifts musically

From somewhere

Where I am not.

Oh, how I laugh!

Hot rays burn my face.

My shadow curls around your small body.

Natalie Crick

Natalie Crick has found delight in writing all of her life and first began writing when she was a very young girl. Her poetry is influenced by melancholic confessional Women’s poetry. Her poetry has been published in a range of journals and magazines including Cannons Mouth, Cyphers, Ariadne’s Thread, Carillon and National Poetry Anthology 2013.