It’s Now or Never

I can’t remember whether it was hot
that day in August. I just remember
I was cooped up in the caf with Marge
when the news came through,
and she was cleaning the tea bar,
scrubbing away at the same stretch
of steel until it mirrored her sweaty
face. Poor Elvis, she kept saying,
poor, poor Elvis, over and over again.
And then a burst of song: It’s now or never,
come hold me tight. Just that, a five
second burst. And I thought,
I never knew you could sing Marge.
I’ve known you for ten years
and I never knew you could sing.
 

Susan Jane Sims

in anthology When the Tramp Met the King, 2013, Ek Zuba Press

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Bric à Brac

Life is all busyness;
death an evaporation
of our conscious thought
 
never clean, never tidy.
 
Our possessions
collected over years
are bagged up as bric à brac,
 
our hearths swept clean
before something else
can inhabit
 
the space in which we so feverishly burned.
 

Susan Jane Sims

in collection Irene’s Daughter, Poetry Space, ISBN 978-0-9565328-2-4;
in anthology The Book of Love & Loss, eds R V Bailey & June Hall, 2014, Belgrave Press,
ISBN 978-0-9546215-2-0

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Clearing Up

First on the scene, the blowflies,
insinuating themselves into the cracks
in your heels, the paper cuts
in your fingers,
 
stuffing your anus,your vagina, filling your nose,
your mouth, your ears
with egg, after egg
after egg.
 
Then the ants,
come marching in, picnic
on eggs and newly hatched
larvae.
 
And then the beetles,
strip skin, devour every morsel
of flesh until
your old yellow bones
get to face the sun.
 

Susan Jane Sims

in collection A number of things you should know, 2015, Indigo Dreams Publishing
ISBN 978-1-9093576-8-6

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Any moment now

Joe will be handed a warm
cream cheese bagel – his treat after
a twelve hour shift at the hospital,
Tina will text Jane and write I’m at the market and I’ve found
this absolutely wonderful dress you must come and see,
Paula will buy Tom a Happy Birthday balloon.
Adam will arrive sweaty but with just enough breath to
chat up the girl on the butcher’s stall. Her name is Beth,
he found that out yesterday.
Martin wearing a hooded jacket despite the warm weather
will walk, to the centre of the crowded market square, and start shooting.
 

Susan Jane Sims

in collection A number of things you should know, 2015, Indigo Dreams Publishing,
ISBN 978-1-9093576-8-6;
first published in The Journal, 2013

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