Jeff Guess

There was no Town   T here was no town, only houses and farms the spread of Nancarrows, Telfers  and Coads. most at the end of unmade corrugated roads where white dust held in twilight air: still, warm-   a suspension after the close closed calm of silence, home schooling, Scripture and the code for Sunday and the elemental load and cycle of work and worship taught the harm   in dirge, drink and dalliance of any kind Satan more palpable in sewing room or shed who stole in chi

Family Photo Album   M emories were waiting at the edge of things beckoning to me. Going back to old photographs: sittings and studios. Waiting for a long, long time before the world   went from sepia to other shades. Touching up the tint on a tartan regimental tie. Cellophane packets of gold and brown slip- -paste photo corners, couldn’t hold the lie   of stance and smile for long. They came unstuck. Some snaps fell out; some had a rogue relative cut out. Too many now are ov

Looking South   L ooking south after summer, from the thin rail of the Brighton jetty, a small running boy in green bathers sweeps in the frail sun through shallow wave-wash. Tiny whiting   fry like sharp silver, darting in his wake. Above my head winter starts in the wings of a sudden albatross for all my sake: surprises me with all I’ve tried to sing.   The small boy is not a younger version of myself. He is simply me and all I know of convergence and the tension of what is

Postcard from Italy   I  climb your words as you have all day the steep cobbled streets of Firenze to the top of hills to look down on a grey city shrouded in mist, the Academia   the Brownings  had a villa here years ago your exclamation marks are easier to get around than long lines to fresco sculpture and paintings in the galleries   it is late - the Uffizi is next Elizabeth  running off to Italy diction and rhythm of her sonnets scaling the heights of Casa Guida   your wo

Jigsaw   I  need a small piece with blue sky and a little bit of green. But I suspect these boxes with a thousand segments are not complete. I think they do not count all of the bits before   they leave the jigsaw factory. On the back of the bottom box are characters – a language that appear as connected tiny television aerials. A strange calligraphy and of course   another kind of puzzle. This is a pastime of parable and very little purpose. And as I play, it works at taking

Solstice   I  lit the fire early in a grate of ice fruit-wood and wrist-thick old briar   catching quickly and climbing in coils spreading along the ceiling of the low-roofed sky.   I pulled an old garden chair to its rough hearth to the spit and hiss of rose oil   and the sweet fume of sawn apricot and peach sunk in a warm corner of the garden framed with cold.   Inertia was everything, moving only for books and coffee my breath a small bellows in the aching air   late after

Polly Want a Cracker   A unt Alma had an aviary now and spent the long summer evenings with her birds, While Albert no longer needing her...

She Smells the Rain             S he smells the rain on me again, behind the still warm stove. I have brought winter, though, in to her....

Love Letters   B efore she got too old then, to forget, my mother burnt all my father's letters from the war. A blustery winter...

My Grandmother’s Shawl   M y grandmother’s crocheted shawl has come undone. It cannot any longer control the temperature of a winter sun:...