last update:
29 Nov24
e-mail Jennie
Jennie Osborne at Second Light
Jennie Osborne at Dempsey and Windle
YouTube video from launch of Signals from the Other …
… and, also at YouTube, Crow Country live improv to reading of poem The Smallest Monkey in the World
… and Predator
poetry favourites:
Wylde Publications
Dempsey and Windle
Moor Poets
Oversteps Books
Poetry Teignmouth
and in the shop…
pamphlet collection –
“Reconstructing a Brother”
Wylde Publications;
collections –
“Signals From the Other”
Dempsey and Windle;
“Colouring Outside the Lines”
and
“How to be Naked”
Oversteps Books
“Moor Poets anthologies”
YouTube poetry p f playlist: Jennie Osborne reading
June 2020 Saunton Sands
Reconstructing a Brother
It’s not easy to piece him together
to fill in the gaps
with my own stories
or stories you and you and you
have made up.
I can see patches, stitches
holes filled with shadow
where the stuffing
has been ripped out
vein pulsing on his forehead
beard grey, hair unkempt.
I put words in his mouth
those I think I remember
those he committed to tape.
They spurt out, slur
onto the carpet.
I dress him in a rugby shirt
can’t remember
did he wear jeans?
At times he is in
two places at once
where he said he was
and where he said he was.
The props are easy
fencing mask, pint of beer
succession of long-dead dogs
jostling his heels.
Even as I work
pick up a piece
I’ve rummaged out –
a photograph perhaps
try to make it fit –
another is dropping off
He won’t look me in the eyes.
I can’t remember
if he ever did.
Jennie Osborne
published in anthology Songs for the Unsung, ed. Joy Howard, Grey Hen Press, 2017;
in pamphlet collection Reconstructing a Brother, Wylde Publications, 2024,
ISBN 978-0-9545474-6-2
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