Even
the dry seed
husks are silent.
There is no sound
meaning the air has stopped, is
somewhere else—Scituate, Poughkeepsie.
Why did it stop moving?
why is the air avoiding us? It left
the cloud here, a blank backdrop
that looks like they didn’t draw the sky yet
or the blue went missing. The cloud, meaning
one single ream of it. It’s the sort of day
when a plane drone makes a difference.
I saw my most purposeful friend on a walk
looking down at his shoes and not bothering to
kick an acorn. The fridge hums in order
to be cold. It is full of joylessness, an old turnip
a broken pomegranate in a sandwich bag.
It’s a Soviet republic sort of day, we might as well
have queued for onions, or a lump of suet. Yeah, Soviet suet,
that’s what kind of day it is, that shade of grey.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 25, Issue 3.
Audrey Henderson’s collection Airstream was shortlisted for the Scotland’s Saltire Society First Book Award. She was awarded a Hawthornden Fellowship and her poems have appeared in PN Review, The Dark Horse Magazine, Magma, New Writing Scotland, The Midwest Quarterly and Tar River Poetry. She was a finalist in the Indiana Review 1/2 K Award and won second place in the River Styx International Poetry Contest. She is originally from Scotland where she contributed to BBC Radio Scotland.
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