THREE POEMS BY CHRISTIAN WARD


The Yellow Fox

The forest is silent as an image
from a postcard, our only audiences
here are trees and falling snow.
As we start to renew the tracks

we made yesterday, I hear sunlight
rummaging through the branches,
following us like an invisible fox
to places that will soon be forgotten.

And as the snow melts, all that's left is you -
a poem shaped out of things I never
knew I had.



Goodnight, Mr Prufrock

Rain falls as the night unfolds,
glazing the fading cattle
with specks of starlight. We pass

rows of disappearing hedgerows,
unaware the world is shrinking
around us, until it is nothing

but the left-over memory
of our final journey
to the land of the naked dead.



Why are you so fucking retarded?

She said to me, expecting
me to dive down a burrow
and curl up on a bed of
straw; where I would be
able to hear her pecking

at the ground above, her
words shaking the earth
with every vowel and syllable.
She wants me to run out
on the road, so I can be

a piece of road kill to be examined;
not to find out the cause
but to be dissected, my innards
laid out across the stars
as a warning to others.


© Christian Ward (christian_ward2000@hotmail.com)

Bio: Christian Ward is a London based poet whose poetry has appeared in journals such as Mastodon Dentist, Subtle Tea and Mannequin Envy. When not studying for a degree in English & Creative Writing or working on his journal 'Black Magma', he enjoys writing, reading, art and films. His blog can be found at http://poetryetcetera.blogspot.com/