Poetry in the Pub

The Night Storms

Kristin Hannaford 

Monsoonal rains, after an absence of ten years or more, have
arrived.
You and I sit with coffee and remember this place.
Two o’clock storms steamed between our sheets
early afternoon. Younger then, we had all day for sex
& later walked in knee high wet grass and puddles
en route to the Club Hotel     sticky
with possibilities of ‘greater than average rainfall.’

The storms have returned. Clouds wait in the hinterlands
smoking up shadow patterns. These clouds weight the sky
and at night we listen as frogs hum up the water.
Lightning appears at first as a distant flicker
the way a television screen lights up a hallway
when others have gone to bed.

Abstract shadow hovers in the eye.
Ambient rumble, casual bass drum builds & finally rips
as some god does the laundry, whipping sheets before the
clothesline.
Making beds and changing linen
I spin the inventory: children asleep
windows closed, washing in, the dog safe?

Curtains settle as wind and light retreat over the mangroves.
Rolling over in the dark, your hand plays absentmindedly
with the cotton of our sheets before sleep.
You whisper of millimeters of rain, tanks filled

& will be anxious to be measuring the rain

my noun is a girl

Julie Beverage 

my noun is girl
self deprecating
unpredictable
the winner of every play fight

my noun is non smoker
all my tar filled wells have run dry

my noun is responsible pet owner
home by six o’clock on a Saturday night

my noun is list writer
pointing to things to do without doing

my noun is lives vicariously through
the magic made in other poets poems

my noun is fading youth
wolf in sheep’s clothing
more than meets the eye
skin deep
rough as guts
red hot lover

my noun is undergraduate
self indulgent
lazy poet
serial cynic
early 90’s pop culture fetishist
diabolical murder enthusiast
closet Neil Diamond worshipper

my noun is HECS debt
credit card debt
personal loan debt
karmic debt

my noun is girl
storm in a teacup
wrong side of the tracks
right place at the right time
a watched pot boiling
two in your hand
fairytale ending