Long Cheesecloth Poems

The holiday season is upon us, and I delight in the memories of my childhood yuletides.  One such memory stands out quite clearly. Just before Thanksgiving, November’s blustery winds arrived, weaving frost spider webs...

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School holidays were testing times for Mum’s with things we done,
when us kids had idle time to chase the values of new fun.
We’d trained our dogs, built bushland huts, chased rabbits; camped at night.
Dipped the...

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often she'd stay the weekend. I'd give her these turnovers. She'd reject them at first by saying" yuk, you eat pig ears"! but one day she took one and ate it. She request them every...

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My eyes scan over the table.
My taste buds begin to perspire.
There’s so much food here on offer,
so I wonder what I’ll desire. 

There are some beautiful salads.
There’s carrot, corn and green peas,
bar-be-cue meat to perfection,
and...

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I cannot find my cheesecloth; where did my cheesecloth go?
Where is it at this moment? I would dearly like to know.
It isn't in the shoe shine kit where oft times I would tuck it,
Nor in...

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1968

Beaten on the school yard
Cursed on the bus
Not all the kids hated whites,
The few left in the hood.
Haters sat at dinner tables
Hearing the call to “justice.”
Just like us.

Nine – not near ready
To understand the chemistry...

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This is How the Dream Goes
David J Walker 

This is how the dream goes when I awaken to 
A cheesecloth cover/filter of borrowed light
Colors melding into a blur of fading memory
A second sight permissioned well...

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The light in the night falls slowly upon weathered decks
We have placed the dead man on a plank and wrapped him in cheesecloth
The rain stops and starts
It doesn’t seem to care that he is dead
Captain...

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i was making a scoop with one hand
with the other palm wide open
i collected them

while they were silent
put together
looking like the old ladies from my neighborhood

the silence from them entered my body,

all care was, not...

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Crack In The Stove
Listen to the pine splits
crack in the stove
clouds down our roof like
burnt pine, milk
The smell of come in the shack

A breeze on the wall
from boiling tomatoes
A baby snorts air
while it sucks a...

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(this brownarmed girl will sleep
with goodman)

testing the white waters at lunch
she in a blushless
cheesecloth frock
chaperoned by one vased fuchsia forget
me not

coyly sipping cantharis tea
verbalizing
circling a triangle
words slipping from breath moistened lips
like fire thirsty moths quenched...

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