INSIDE THIS ISSUE:
Patty Dickson
Pieczka
Deji Adesoye
Michelle Bailet-Jones
Steve Barfield
Gale Acuff
Elisavietta Ritchie
Solomon Haruna
Aneek Chatterjee
Karyn M. Bruce
Robert Nisbet
Laszlo Slomvits
Y. Przhebelskaya
Running Cub
Alan Britt
Richard Gartee
Fahredn Shehu
Amit Parmressar
Ann Arbor Review
is an independent
International Journal & ezine
Copyright (c)
2021-22 Francis FerdeAll rights revert back to each poet. --editor /
Southeastern Florida
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AAR history note: in print 1967 - 1980. Irregular publications 1980 - 2004. As ezine 2004 - present. Most of 55 years all together....
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staff:
Francis Ferde, editor
Silver Grey Fox, editing
Running Cub, reader
Fred Wolven, publisher
Submissions via e-mail:
Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall
The
mirror’s been there fifty years,
decked gold with cherub’d edges,
once winking in the Palace Ballroom,
seeing such shifts and joys of colour,
white petticoats’ spin
and Taylor, sneaked up close,
to comb that quiff of Elvis-black.
The
forty years of warehouse
brought difference, shades of grey.
And mirrors don’t do sound, so
missed trade’s tread, the drivers’
banter, whistling, daily round.
Now,
the social centre. The scene
still slow, bingo things, the bob
of greyer heads. But Taylor still
sneaks close, with boxed-set comb
(a present from the Widow Jenkins)
to groom that white moustache.
Bay Window
Facing
away from the television’s whimper
(It’s Countdown, Betty. Don’t you want to watch?),
she’ll look from her window at the street outside,
at the smokers twined in a knot of nicotine
outside the Masons’ Arms, at the punters,
old and young and fat and shivering-thin
and jovial and woebegone,
treading, pacing, moving with the day,
making for the bakery, for Pound-stretcher,
the stationer’s, Yvette the hairdresser’s,
the market and the charity shops
(Betty liking the copiousness, the insistence,
the hustling and the onwards pace of it).
And
just the one ghost, the shade of Steve,
walking the same street, a schoolboy and older
(always in uniform, as she remembers him),
bustling down the terrace to her house,
a plump boy, rushing onwards, always,
those spring and summer holidays,
at the very start of the war.
Robert Nisbet, Haverfordwest, Wales, UK