Lindy Usher (L.E. Usher) was born in Australia. Her previous novels are Miss, The Sudden Spoon, and Then Came October, and pamphlet Desolate Beauty (The Frogmore Press, 2018). She had three strokes (2008-09) and she has aphasia. She lives in Kent and France.
Heavy Roses (diagram of doom)
[after Edward Steichen, 1879-1973]
1/
diffuse light
staccato waves
revealing the desirous reality
(impenetrable obscurity)
your liar’s smile
hot tears smarted my eyes
I tried to conceal my emotion
(lull between the outbursts)
2/
flaunt
such jewel beauty
fast-moving, darting, unused to confinement
erratically and fatally
(what to do?)
quibbling
my face, ravaged
my child’s eyes
laughter is the sound
(wafts like birdsong)
3/
forward and backward
up and down
strange creature
blink blink blink myriad glowing
(colour-coding helps)
unfazed by my intrusion
her skin is the moonlight
transfixed in reverence
with fleeting embrace
(figments of someone else’s imagination)
4/
fledgling took fatal tumble
painstakingly identified remains
through a welter of roots
whitecloud in rainwashed sky
(images of sorrow and)
happiness – a chord of nostalgia –
my boyhood epiphanies and
ragtag notions and prissy manners
do you remember this or that?
(aura of tenderness, affinity)
5/
where
spiders the size of a baby’s hand
where
performed high-web acts across curled in fury
(furrowing the morning calm)
cascade of steps
rectangles
pale pink and violet clusters
round and beneath the austere outline
you can chase a rainbow
(autumn’s first chaste frost)
6/
sundew
viscid fluid
leaves spangled, drooping
tiny viciousness
(she whispered my name)
unadulterated pleasure
in each other’s eyes
through the lens of my camera
time converged there
(life began anew)
7/
bevy of mud snails
unending procession
quamish
dark, dark sloes
(ineradicable thumbprints)
perfect parabola?
adjustment for angle?
faucet dripping
kind of warped confusion
(conversation is impossible)
8/
sullen lights
sputtering of tattered wings
layers and layers of different hues
not flying, not flying
(slow thoughts)
looking – smelling – listening
soiled stream and foul wind
festering, gouges made by the rain
and sad and free
(slips between your fingers)
9/
authentic colour
gossamery colossal flower-heads
yellow shimmying, burnt-orange flouncing,
crimson flaring, windblown roses over dark water
(deliberate indifference)
silence smothering yesterdays
he was cutting roses
and discarded leaves
rain glistened on his eyelashes
(all was not well)
10/
geese call
as they wing southward
imperceptibly welded
with sky and land
(numbed fingers)
you let your gaze wander
more than meets the eye
subtle alteration of perspective
random chiaroscuro
(two side by side)
11/
primeval stillness
light of mother-of-pearl
powdery snowbank
obscured pools of slush pockmarked
(startled by his footprints)
ice-encrusted grips, merciless
rays ricochet off grinding fields
kaleidoscope and arabesque cracking
innards were flung, strange auguries
(nature’s choreographic bounty)
12/
streams run high with melt, clear, pure
skeletal cherry shows a tinge of promise
pale primrose the greensward
song of the dog broke
(tempers flared)
do stop speaking riddles
a tissue of words
him smiling, to fill the void
the sign never came
(and so it was)
© L.E. Usher, 2025