COBBLER
A life cobbled from what was available
hreds and patches
A bit of blue satin from my mother’s robe
Stained with coffee and resentment
A piece of scraggly lace from my aunt’s shawl
Storming off screaming to hell with you
As she swept down the street
Careening between cars and cries
A shred of my father’s shirt starched
Stiff with propriety
A snippet of my uncle’s robe
Red striped, stinking of smoke
And midnight memories
A scrap of my brother’s
Genius that could not be woven
Not mine to weave
What if I were made of
Whole cloth
What then
WE ARE THE GHOSTS
of unlived time
we whisper pleas
to notice the minutes
hours, days that slide
through the cracks of your life
we wait below, catch them
in our outstretched hands and
place them in boxes and baskets
lined with blue velvet
Daydreaming through music and art
senior year at St. Mary’s
unable to tell Manet from Monet
Bach from Beethoven
cracks widen, baskets fill
fashion magazines, soap operas
Fifty Shades of Grey
living vicariously while
sand trickles through time
What of years stoned on cocaine
track marks scabbing your arms
rubber tubes, razor blades, syringes
sleepless nights racing heart
a nose that runs and runs
surviving on air and sex
taking more and more of the
white powder that
brings salvation
A lover with a DNR
grief saturated
your cells until
it became your home
as weeks passed
pink pills all day
red wine at night
lost time falling like
petals into our waiting hands
we take moments from
Claire Scott
velvet lined baskets and
weave them into cloth
odd bits and pieces
or stretches lasting years
patching them together
to form another life
waiting to be lived
Can you hear us calling?
we are the ghosts of unlived time
we can’t wait much longer
Claire Scott is an award winning poet who has published in numerous literary magazines. She has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize (2013 and 2014). She was also a semi-finalist for both the 2014 Pangaea Prize and the 2014 Atlantis Award. Her forthcoming first collection of poems, Waiting to be Called, will be published in April of 2015.