Feeding the Invaders - Day 7 NaPoWriMo animal poem

Feeding the Invaders          NapoWriMo            Day 7

The alternative would be to open our doors to toads and magpies, snakes, hawks and woodlouse spiders,
in the spirit of the woman who swallowed the fly.

Instead, after tea, dishes and making our lunches and five sugar-free jellies to soothe Frank's sore throat,
Then, I set to feeding the invaders.

I stuff shredded paper and last week's flowers in the corner the pill woodlouse likes, where no-one goes
and where it doesn't feel the need to contort it's carapace into a protective ball of antiquity.

I leave the mice toastcrumbs, peanut butter and three types of cheese
in the hope they won't touch my good, dark, unopened chocolate

set out a row of aphids on my rubber plant for the ladybird's pleasure

chop the Portobello mushrooms thinly to ease the slug's digestion

then I strip naked and fall asleep on top of the duvet offering all my skin
to the hot bite of the mosquito


Sarah L Dixon

Back at The Diamond - softball poem NaPoWriMo Day 6

Back at the diamond

A diamond drawn in fresh white powder
makes this more adult than childhood rounders

the new season's cleats slice through grass,
release this Summer's scent en masse

swallows criss-cross the weed-strewn pitch
inches above my resting mitt

marked with my team names - Renegades,
Rangers, Centurions, Clanger Brigade.

Dad said "you can't throw, run or catch
why would you play in a softball match?"

encouragement had me running home
this was never a feat I achieved on my own

an outfielder that can't throw the distance
laidback second, but there in an instant

on first base, trusted and terrified
I make a catch, that make winners of our side


Sarah L Dixon

A tipsy, tidy pause - Wedding 1 2012 NaPoWriMo Day 5 not the Blues

A tipsy, tidy pause

I take my new clothes, bold hair
and my newly mastered contact lenses
off to Edinburgh.

To The Royal College of Surgeons
for a short ceremony with Matt and Alicia's personal vows.
Then a celidih and a disco,
only two songs I know the words to,
but I dance and dance
and flirt and dance
and enjoy my friends, my husband
and my newfound confidence.

I miss my boy
but revel in reclaiming womanhood.

No carrot crusted hair
no yoghurt smudges on my dress
no ketchup scumbled on my cheek.

Woman, not mother, for a weekend.

A tipsy, tidy pause.

Day 4 - 2 weddings this year - The Epithalamion

Two weddings this year

Two weddings this year
one traditional, one modern.
As a poet
I am glad neither couple
asked me to write an
epithalamion
because I would have no idea
what they meant
or how to spell it
and I don't write to order.


Sarah L Dixon      NaPoWriMo   Day 4

Phil Lynott was three years too late NaPoWriMo Day 3

Phil Lynott was three years too late

I know it was Abba.
The "Dancing Queen" of every 70s disco
every "Love Train" of my teenage years.
The song that heralded my early arrival
and then imprisoned me on full dancefloors.

I imagine "Sarah" was my birth song.
That slow Thin Lizzy bounce
recall the noisy mechanism
and comforting hum of the Dancette.

I can't tell Dad I cracked his single
instead I force it flat
and there is only a slight heartskip
every revolution.


Sarah L Dixon                   Na PoWriMo Day 3

My Salford whirlwind

for Melanie Rees

My Salford whirlwind, blazing blue eyes, tight blonde curls

Make-up met none, my trainers scuffed your 6 inch heels

and now you prop my world up with your words

My Salford whirlwind, blazing blue eyes, tight blonde curls

We cry at each other’s poems about loss and birth    

Hug as others finish the words we can’t read real.

My Salford whirlwind, blazing blue eyes, tight blonde curls

Make-up met none, my trainers scuffed your 6 inch heels

a small but significant victory NaPoWriMo Day 1 Carpe Diem poem

a small but significant victory

Feverish fingers held lightly
as sleep ambushes
your damp pinkness.

I make vows to myself
to grab tomorrow and throttle words from it
(to do this every day for a month)

To feed the part of me
that devotes itself to your easy laughter.
Lost to illness for now.

I compose a small, short victory
of twelve lines
as you sleep and twirl and sleep again.



Sarah L Dixon