Poems by Kate Lilley

1-800-DENIED
 
Take this watch in token of my etc.
Glycerin pardon, barometric rage.
Now the dust jacket bears your name you have to wear it.
 
The sky’s a huge screen flickering omens.
The doors and windows reek of yesteryear
and tenderness continues in every detail.
 
Lonely all the time until you paged me.
Cardiac personae, heavy turncoat.
Ransack a chorine’s affection at your peril.
 
Abscond into criminal conversation.
Objection: asked and answered.
When the snow melts I’ll open a candy concession
 
and moonlight as an accident attorney.
Gynaecologists rusticate in petite laneway luxury.
I await the southerly buster like any denizen.

The Ladies Dictionary
 
Quality if rightly taken
carries with it something extraordinary
 
If she be rich she must be a Gentlewoman
a Tree which shrinks in its Leaves
shamefacd tho neverso lightly
 
A Ladies Credit is of equal bashful niceness
a small touch may wound and destroy it
ringing Changes on all accidents,
making them tunable
 
drawing like the painful Bee
a Mass of Hony out of Flowers of various Scents

Illustration by Melissa Hardie.

Anisotropy
 
Material that has no counterpart
is evidence of love
 
and what else   spoiled for another
the first real good object
 
the graph is indecisive
the interpretation was not quite right
 
tell me what you want me to know
biter twice bitten
 
a dwelling place that has been destroyed
is now at your disposal
 
 
For “melancholia with long intervals”
read “melancholia with short intervals”
 
One letter at a time   a pin upon the floor
something was said about a dust-pan and brush
 
On being given a pencil she calls it a pen-knife
“it is what you write with”
 
No   it is a door-key
 
dull-sharp
salt-sugar
taste and charm
 
She says they are unalike
o with a piece cut out is e
 
“water-closet” was repeated with especial frequency
(acute intestinal malady)
 
As interesting are the menstrual melancholias
or those which are homicidal
 
 
Grievances followed in chronological order
 
belle indifférence
chronic affection
excess efficiency
 
It was a fine day             not too hot
the scene had crushed her hopes
 
She stood as though spellbound
a burning wish
applying criticism
 
“Degenerate” would distort the meaning of that word
(clacking, grimaces)
 
No reply
 
A little cocaine to untie the tongue
the procedure never fails
 
Since then the lady has sung in public