editorial comment on "Bottle" by editor, Truancy

In the editorial introduction of Truancy 9, the editor-in-chief, Nin Harris, comments on my poem of the fantastic, "Bottle":

...[We] move to Scotland by way of Sarah Webb's "Bottle", a Selkie poem that was so intense, it caught me by the throat."

Thank you, Nin!

The writing in Truancy draws on folklore and fairy tale.  

Click the link to read the poem (and other writing in the issue) on Truancy's website:

https://truancymag.com/2021/07/31/bottle-by-sarah-webb/

Last Pieces

To Kim Mosley’s “Last Pieces”

The crow who makes a nest of the world looks for colors from the heart left behind on picnic tables or trailed behind careless pedestrians. He flaps down to the grime of a sidewalk and caws in triumph, Here’s a treasure! Memories of sunsets, a scrap of Jamaica turquoise against white sand, a bonfire of bodies shuddering in bed and the dull of oxblood as habit sets in, pencilled love notes, sweat-stained apologies, burnt bridges, frown lines and quirked-up dimples, twigs that scraped against kitchen windows and bedroom blinds, pleading Let me in, I’ll do anything if you let me stay! It’s a midden of a nest, and it steams with the ache of a thousand families, hums sometimes with Happy Birthday, with tears swallowed at Auld Lang Syne and the That’s Our Song of forty different couples. Reproving sniffs, eye-raised ecstasy, malice like a brown slug. A cattle dog’s bark is caught in the corner by somebody’s sob and a whisper It’ll be all right—hang on till I can get there. Once, There’s nothing you can do that would make me not love you—rarest of all and gleaming. People don’t drop those like a crumb from a sandwich. 

 —Sarah Webb

More Complicated

Now To Kim Mosley’s “More complicated!”

The day comes at you.
“Look at me!” it says,
bursting with sunlight and blossom,
making it almost impossible to see
the dirt below the forsythia—
yellow banging at your eyelids—
the pink of tulips, blue of Mexican tile
calling, No, me! Me! I’m the prettiest!

It wakes you up early, the day calling out, hello!
You didn’t really want to sleep, did you?
and keeps you buzzing—a coffee of a day
and three-margarita dance floor jumble in the evening.

When you stumble home at last,
there’s a moment of can I read myself to sleep?
and oh, did I forget ...

But wasn’t it fun, lost in the pretty bauble of the day,
the disco-ball of the night sending
shivers of light over everyone’s makeup?
and just one quiet dream deep in the dark
asking, where have I gone?

—Sarah Webb