Sue Spiers
It’s sulphur inside a yolk when you’re shaving;
a mirror image that’s slightly misbehaving.
It’s feeling calcium grow when bones curl in fingers,
ghosts of malleable digits, reptilian harbingers.
It’s coppicing trees when their leaves turn to copper
cleaving the earth, destruction; vile and improper.
It’s skating for gold when nobody’s watching
Death carry on winning the corpses he’s notching.
It’s oxygen opening a morning yawn;
air-gulping, lung-suck – deeply drawn.
It’s when an atom of hydrogen hopes to explode
but needs flame or acid to help it corrode.
It’s the undulating needle when detecting uranium
beating fierce and fast as a hyperventilating drum
It’s evening neon when stalking a path,
the pheromone scent of her indignant wrath.
It’s a string of zinc unzipping your mind,
thoughts of yourself instead of mankind.
It’s the silver of moonlight when everyone’s sleeping,
the avian chirrup of a monitor beeping.
It’s a dime or a nickel for each time you notice
that Fido still loves you despite the necrosis.
Sue Spiers lives in Hampshire U.K. and works with the Winchester Poetry Festival and Open University poets. Her work has been published in Acumen and Orbis International Journal and on-line at the Wine Cellar, Ink, Sweat & Tears and Snakeskin. Sue tweets @spiropoetry.