Three Poems by Carla Manfredino

On the pier

We changed that winter
when the leaves dried and
turned in on themselves.

The sea stays the same
standing on the shore
it is seasonless.

But then turn and see
the leafless trees scratch
complicated shapes
on an otherwise
soft sky
their upturned hands
damning and blameless.

As if they were
always this empty
as though their wigs
were a joke
in the spring.

We walked along the iron bones
of a road that wanted to grow
to the size of the horizon-

did we look back
and see the trees whipped clean?
Is that why we’re abbreviated
and the sea is complete?





Forgetting

when one day was far away now
time is played like an accordion
that does not open back out.
When I think of hills
I see a catch all picture
for all hilly things
when I try to stack these hills
in front of my eyes, I hear our words
the same sounds, sometimes
louder. That sound: water over rocks
I came here to see where we sat, from a distance
but all I see is the same feeling shaping the place.





hello tree

​you’ve been torn in a storm
but you drink like it’s a sunny day.

The back of you is charred
like steak, inside the crack
you are clean as a snake.

Dried wings
of summer’s
leaves hang
with the unflown

birds come and live on you
and weave their twigs and leave freely.

You will outlive us. The edge
edges closer each day.
Your decline is romantic.

Little lives come to you
and grow through you silently

tearing the careful pavements,
we will be still and clutching
to your roots

when you break your concrete feet
and you move move move

​


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Image - Stephanie Kac
https://www.flickr.com/photos/stephaniekac/
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/

Bio: Carla is a freelance writer living in Wales. Her story JOHN was published in Electric Read's Young Writer's Anthology 2016 and her poems have appeared in Dirty Chai, Squawckback, and The New Welsh Review. Carla reads poetry submissions for The White Review and writes reviews for The TLS, Wales Arts Review and The New Welsh Review. She is working on a collection of short stories based on the human spirit's response to boredom and isolation set in a seaside town.

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