Poetry

Janus

We will not make it to the end of the month.

You squint over my shoulder fixing on spring

through the skylight, my eye on the cream winter

of the bedsheets, on the glint of rosewood

between the mattress and the bed frame.

I try to plant my doubts in you but nothing takes.

Your ambition, polystyrene, kicked along the street

appears to crumble but never really goes away.

Time will break it down into a cheap facsimile of snow.

Our bodies part exhausted with this attrition,

hands caught between prayers and high fives.

From the Eduardo Paolozzi cycle (xvii)

Gary Hughes

© 2014