This is not a poem


This is not a poem.
And this is not a poem
About the moon.
She’s of no use to me.
Turns up
As the sun relaxes,
Like an old man
On a leather armchair
That started the day stiff
And ended it broken in and soft.

The moon is of no use to me
When I yearn for the days’ clarity
To light my time, endlessly.
While silence and idleness
Take over the world for their day
When the moon comes to stay.

Laying the bedlinen open
Turning mirrors
Pulling blankets
Shaping pillows.
And pushing me
To stop making shades
Under its windowsill
Laying blades of grass to sleep.

The moon is of no use to me!
Life seems shorter in the dark
The dark feels like a grudge
When the moon is out.
The moon is of no use to me
And so I won’t write her a poem.
I won’t talk about her at all…


© Madalena Fine

An overdue woman

An overdue woman
Is constantly pregnant
Until blossom rips through
Her body
And she is reborn.

An overdue woman
Slides through a door of protruding broken glass
To reach the empty room
And fill it with desire.

An overdue woman
Balances herself on
An acrobatic rope
Hanging over a precipice
And walks it, skipping and cowering
Cowering and hopping
Crying only on the other side.

An overdue woman
Blasts with anger
“Rip it out of me already”
Screams she to the mirror
“Rip it out and be.”
Whispers she.

An overdue woman
Is a caterpillar.
A blustery day
With sunshine.
Is white spectrum
And harbours all the colours.
Is a cold morning
Before rise.


An overdue woman is
Not a loaf of bread
that hasn’t baked
Not an unlit coal,
Not a masterpiece that has been faked.


© Madalena Fine