We’re going to France (Brittany) for ten days. Friends from Holland are housesitting so I hope it’s all still standing when we return *grin*. I’ll miss you all. Hopefully I’ll get chance to do some writing when I’m away, at the very least I’ll gain a few pounds and chill out, which after this last year is much needed. I’ll get caught up on my googleyreader when I get home. Ta ta.

Submissions are open for the second issue of Asphalt Sky, a literary journal set up by Jessica Fox Wilson (I’m on the editorial board too). The deadline is 1st September, so please send in your poetry, prose, artwork. Here are the submission guidelines. The last issue was wonderful, join us!

Half-past twelve and I wake
to find a baby by the bed, mouth
open, faraway cry floating out.
I know what she wants, reach
over, pull her up, wonder why she
weighs no more than a doll.
She roots with icy lips and my
nipple burns at the clamp of gums,
the art of latching not learned
though she’s five months now.
Sucking hungrily she wants
what’s hers, what they had.
I smile at the forgotten tingle
when the milk floods in.
As she feeds, she warms,
fills out, the smell of just baked
bread rising from her scalp.
Drifting into sleep, she releases
me with a sigh of baby breath.
When the alarm shrills, she’s
gone, my nipple sore, pink.

I’ve decided to password protect occasional posts, like the one below, for reasons I mentioned a week or so ago. I trawled back through all my comment pages, and if you’re a regular reader or even an irregular one *grin*, I should have mailed you the password to the a/c you comment under. If you didn’t get the password and you’d like it, please mail me at johemmant @ gmail dot com. Hope this doesn’t make life too complicated and thanks again for reading. Have a fab weekend. J

Sing me a madrigal,
sing to me of love for
I know nothing of this,

I am a flash of lace, a flower
tucked behind an ear, a cat call,
the street’s gift, under stars,
in a storm.

Come sing to me of love.

The tailor brings cloth to
cover where he lies to forget
what he cannot forgive.

The fisherman brings the shine of
six silver fish, salt scent of the
sea, bids me dance so he can
watch me sway.

The farmer brings a basket of
eggs still feathered and warm,
drinks ale first, curses me when
he is done.

But the miner brings me coins
when I want only his touch,
the buds of dark prints on
pale skin that speak of us.

Sing me a madrigal,
sing to me of love for
I know of this.

The night the matchmaker came, my father
spoke of me as plain, hardworking,
devoted to God.

They brokered a deal with six cows,
an orchard’s apples.

I heard the words farm, wheat, second son,
saw a man in a field, a scythe’s question.

When we met you blushed crimson,
tongue falling over my name.

I saw you only on Sundays, playing the
piano in church, watched your hands flutter
through hymns, imagining a wedding night,
the two of us uncertain as moths beside a
candlelit bed the guests had wet for luck.

That night you unbuttoned my dress and it fell
to the floor, a shadow of the girl I had been.
Laying me down, you covered my skin in kisses
light as breath, my hips lifting themselves to you
to dance till I was crimson too, crying out in colour,
knowing this as love.

you notice the hemline first
bottom-skimming
polar white skirt trimming
a pair of perfect pins

pulling into my usual parking place
I admire the balancing act on six-inch heels for
added height and grace

imagine them doing a cancan
gartered and frilled
poised on the side of a pool
in a jaunty pre-dive pose
crossed elegantly on the tube
in Dior on the red carpet
flashbulbed
spread apart on silk sheets
explored by a grateful mouth

opening the door
I suppress the urge to shout
they’re gorgeous
for god’s sake enjoy them while you can
before long they’ll be sporting dimples
instead of a salon tan
varicose veins that multiply with each
pregnancy like filaments of bluegreen algae

I’m telling you sister
you can sashay all you like
the end is nigh
just round that corner
coming sooner than you think