Poetry by Adele Evershed

minka CC




Not Just Another I Remember Poem
Or How to Recover a Lost Bird

I remember
Sounding the air
Walking through a field of bones
As blue as my mother’s eyelids
The darkness ripening on my arms
Under the long sleeves of a Blondie T-shirt
I remember 
The litany held in the silence
Or in the white bottle of Anaïs Anaïs
In the bathroom cabinet
Behind the smashed mirror--
Don’t annoy your father
I remember 
That shadows can grab you
And a curled body 
Can never hide in the bottom of a wardrobe
Or under a bed beside a torn gift bag
And a suitcase is not the closing of a story
 
                                                                                                                                                                I don’t remember 
                                                                                                                                                                       Where I got it
                                                                                                                                The idea that love was a lost bird
                                                                                                                                                                             Dickinson? 
                                                                                                                                      She was over fond of feathers
                                                                                                                                                               And a turned face
                                                                                                             So I Google but there is no poem by Emily
                                                                                                         Only an article on how to recover a lost bird
                                                                                                                                                                           It’s not easy
                                                                                                                                                  But then love never was
                                                                                                                                                       And then I remember
                                                                                                                                                                It never was love
                                                                                                                                                                         And it’s easy





​Madeleines and Other Things that Crumble

Outside the white sky is water washed / and I am sitting in bed / doing a memoir writing workshop / on Zoom / the instructor talks about Proust / and I wonder what is my madeleine moment / currants soaking overnight in cold tea / for the cozy bara brith / my Gran liked to bake / they always came out as glossy as moles / and as dark as the slag / brinking on the mountain

She says / look around / choose an object / I’ll give you four minutes / for a free write / remember / try to link it to a memory / my eyes catch on my bra / lying like a promise on the bed / one cup holds its form / the other twisted back on its self / 
like the stories I tell about my father / always a grain of truth / hidden in the memory foam

Include scent / the woman’s voice prompts / I sniff tentatively / mixed with the soap / is the a tang of under boob sweat / or my father / he only ever took cat lick baths / to save water / or so he said / later his nooks and crannies were red and inflamed / like a Welsh preacher shouting about the circles of hell / trying to scared us / when we all knew they were reserved for the English

Now the voice is sharing a poem / notice all the s’s / dissolve / school /double fisted / anyone know what double fisted means / and again I think about my father /
shaking the HP with two hands / so that a spray of brown sauce flew out / like sputum / marking my mother’s magnolia anaglypta / of course they painted over it / but each year it would creep back  / like the moon shadow on a miner’s lung

Pick a childhood image / and write playfully / if she’d stopped at write / I might have picked up my pen / and written about waiting in the best room / for my father / to take me to ballet / I peered through the nets / a modern day Miss Haversham / asking God to make him appear / when the car pulled in / I’d ask to make him / not smell of beer / and sometimes God answered / but most times he did not

So I can’t write playfully / instead I doodle complicated chains / to anchor me in the here and now / and so it looks like I’m having fun mining my memories / like all the other seventy-five middle-aged / middle-class women / on the screen / and the one man / there’s always one / Steve with a v / finish up now the voice says / and I know / I was finished a long time ago / 

Then there’s an echo / every voice double fisted / Can you hear an echo / Can you hear an echo / I’ll mute / I’ll mute / Thank you Anita / Thank you Anita / Sweet buns pulled apart / Sweet buns pulled apart / and I’m smiling / smiling / and I’m laughing  / laughing / and for the first time / I soak my own old currents / to bake in a cake / and I eat every last crumb. / every last crumb

​




Bridge

We were told
Everything starts with the human heart

Frame by frame
a heroine on a bridge
everything in motion-the water, the leaves, her hair
but you can’t trust the wind
or biology--
you have both boy days and girl days
but people want to police your gender
asking would you go to a jail for a man or a woman?
and if you eat like a pig can you call yourself a pig?
and you tell them—parents can do frightening things to both boys and girls 

                      In the animated movie ‘Spirited Away’ there is a living light pole
                                                       it illuminates a path in a swamp
                                         showing how to leave the middle of nowhere
                                                       and find your way everywhere.
                                                                 you loved that movie

                                                                                                                                                              Maybe 
                                                                                                 Everything starts with the human hand

                                                                                                                                       So frame by frame
                                                                                                                    I watch the sea spit you out 
                                                                                                                              standing on the bridge 
                                                                                                                                 the burrowing things 
                                                                                                                                  crawl from your ears 
                                                                                                                    and slide down your cheeks
                                                                                                                               so I offer you my hand 
                                                                                           and hope you trust me enough to take it 

​


​
Adele Evershed was born in Wales and has lived in Hong Kong and Singapore before settling in Connecticut. Her prose and poetry have been published in over a hundred journals and anthologies. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net for poetry. Finishing Line Press will publish Adele’s first poetry chapbook, Turbulence in Small Places, in July. Her Novella-in-Flash, Wannabe, was published by Alien Buddha Press in May and Bottlecap Press just published her second poetry collection, the Brink of Silence.
Thank you in advance for your kind consideration.