Walking too fast through the cemetery.
Etchings in stone, fallen headstones.
Women – 37, 39, rotting
beneath wet grass – perishing
under the perkiest of daffodils.
Who loved these women; what manner
of men? Women buried
next to other women. Spinsters?
What a word: conjuring worn fingers,
thickly threaded corsets and dark eyes,
wide open. Women, sinking.
Strolling on through the village.
Everything is blooming. Cherry
blossoms, brazen, parade
across the common, shedding.
Left, right, straight: a little girl
riding her bike between garden
parties of gnomes.
Snow White’s statue, looking on:
eyes glazed, teeth chipped.
Peeping in windows –
no shop, just a post office:
open two and a half days a week.
Clouds soften. My hair, damp.
Amy Schreibman Walter is an American poet and teacher living in London. Her work has appeared in numerous journals on both sides of the Atlantic. Amy is a co-editor of the online poetry magazine here/there:poetry.
Categories: Poetry
Tags: Amy Schreibman Walter, Cassington, e-zine, ezine, hyperbole, longing, melancholy, melancholy hyperbole, new, poem, poet, poetry, poets, spinster, submit, women, writing
Melancholy Hyperbole 