Poetry by Lois Hambleton

                ​renee. CC



​
Arcimboldo kid


On following my friend into the woods 
last day 
we’d ever spend at school. I found her 
where we always played, the earth 
had sprouted up a carpet there 
with lichens, ferns, the shady parts. 
What’s up? I said, you didn’t wait. 
Her face had aged, her skin, a table top 
we’d made from crates. 
Our Arcimboldo portrait hall
was now her flesh
the fruit, the oaken things. The veg 
that once restored her nose and eyes. 
She cried 
and drenched the armchairs 
glued with leaves and cones. 
I whispered - Its ok, we’ll still be friends. 
We won’t, she said, and pulled my cheeks 
between her hands - Come on, I’ll race you 
to the very edge, she said. 
Her manner, then, her warmth 
more frightening than ivy growth 
that now replaced her golden hair. 
A house of leaves we’d spun 
made knives from birch 
and plates from bark. And acorn cups 
had soothed her baby brother, when he wept.
She’d curve an angel clear across his trembling back.

I’d see her 
silent as the birds when gunshot shrieks 
across the trees and if I thought of her at all 
it’s when I saw her mother 
screech and sprawl 
across a car park in her truck. 
An armoured thing
that took great chunks from supermarket walls. 





A former lecturer at South & City College Birmingham UK, Lois has work included in two addiction anthologies - A Wild and Precious Life (Unbound) & Despite Knowing (Fore Street Press). Her daughter’s recovery from alcoholism has been documented in an ongoing series of poems - Bottle Girl @ recovery.

She has also been published with Poetry Bus Magazine, Indigo Dreams, Culture Matters Co-Operative Ltd, Creative Ink, The Madrigal Press, Transcendent Zero Press & Last Stanza Poetry Journal. 
​