Tuesday poem #335 : Shelly Harder : untitled

once there was a man who didn't like a single thing about his appearance but he stared in the mirror for weeks and one day he realised he had a coy flirtatious mole on his left temple and then he was happy

I never know why I am sad the philosophers say birds do things merely of instinct but think of the daffodils that wilt or the carrots in the fridge memory is a vegetable force that digs and digs and cannot fly

yet they call machine intelligence artificial as though ours sprouted genuine and inevitable as though ours were an untampered whole grain fibrous and good for the gut

at night the apocalypse happens in my dreams the world is drowning mouldy attics the only place left and I swim floating rubble humid, weltering, dull

& there’s not much to say three bushes on a pinprick hill and fields of yellowed grass, the train stopped under a filthy sky the reek of fire, a translucent bag stabbed on a branchand the insistent promise of rain

when loss has lost its loss, there’s nothing much to remember

Shelly Harder hails from rural Ontario and recently has lived in Ireland and the UK.  A first chapbook, remnants, was published by Baseline Press.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan