Stephanie Green

CRÉME BISCUITS

The universe doesn’t take a coffee break
clothes won’t iron themselves
watch the writer scribble down that half-remembered lyric
that silky hyperbole
or witty epithet

in a minute
the coffee will have boiled
another poem
will be knocking at the door

wanting a chat
and a perhaps a créme biscuit
if the Atkin’s diet will allow

writers will lose inches
to gain respect
tennyson never did the washing-up
and even Homer
enjoyed a créme biscuit

* * *

TWO WARRIORS AND THE LOST WORDS

Words hope to become lost within, and in quiescence no one fears. Twenty strong men curl their toes about the branches, lifting the shapeless slumberers higher — higher still, till their claws reach out in dreams, grasping, quaking and clawing for the secrecy of that place.

One by One they fall below, and the city devours them, bones and foam edges and all. No one will cut themselves any longer. Heaven forbid one might find a decent coffee in this place.

Two warriors lean against the portaloo; they chew sweatbreads and wonder how the world got to be such; how the words have been lost. But in that place with the strong men, and the sleepers, and a tiny white building lazing on a grassy hillock, the words wait.

Tomorrow perhaps, after the kids return from rugby practice, the words will also return, but they will be forever changed, only an echo of what they once were. Altogether beautiful and woesome, these eldritch grammaticisms slither forth...

That is, if they can return at all.

Steff Green is a vision-impaired braille transcriber and freelance writer currently living in New Zealand. Her work appears in Abilities magazine, Strange Horizons, Mindflights, Big Pulp magazine, Writers' News and Haruah, among others. Visit her website at http://www.steffgreen.com .