Poetry by Stephen C. Middleton

Memory superimposed on memory. Grainy & thin. Beginnings. Later reconstruction / of the distractions, the noises off. Forever lacking a compelling reason. Blink & you miss it (he said) & she did. A hat trick. The sneezing hairdresser / allergic to hairspray, or hair – her job, basically, we say / A recurring trope. Custodian, here, historian of the plague.  Resultant agues. Strange resistance. ‘Today I brushed my hair for the first time since the illness came’. Calcifying – quantifying with Questionnaires, they decree, the nature of the need. Calibrate pain – to the point of, etc. The bathing of wounds. It ends, in any case, with flowers.

Stephen C. Middleton is a writer working in London, England. He has had five books published, including A Brave Light (Stride) and Worlds of Pain / Shades of Grace (Poetry Salzburg). He has been in several anthologies, including Paging Doctor Jazz (Shoestring), From Hepworth’s Garden Out (Shearsman, 2010), & Yesterday’s Music Today (Knives Forks and Spoons, 2015). For several years, he was editor of Ostinato, a magazine of jazz and jazz-related poetry, and The Tenormen Press. He has been in many magazines worldwide. He is currently working on projects (prose and poetry) relating to jazz, blues, politics, outsider (folk) art, mountain environments, and long-term illness.

Photo by Alex Boyd on Unsplash