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Debbie Strange


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​Go to page 2 of Debbie Strange's poetry 
Debbie Strange's profile 

A Selection of "Tankart"...

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the twelfth floor

she lives in a room
her home
a cell
on the twelfth floor
 
she stands at the window
waiting
watching
the setting sun’s red eye
 
(and the curb
for a familiar face)
 
she is bathed in red
her curtains
the colour of anger
and her glowing cigarette
 
she takes the family photographs
off the wall
and hides their faces
deep inside a drawer
 
(the next time we visit
we find ourselves missing)
 
when we comment
she says
just paring down
less to dust

A Selection of Haiku...


 geese unzip the sky
 a snowflake trembles
 on your eyelashes


​
at dock's end
a yellow ladder
steps in sky



dog nails on hardwood
waken us at four a.m.
a mouse in my shoe



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A Selection of Small Poems


the drowning trees
their driftwood bones
rise up

a desecration
of toxic algae blooming
we, the gardeners

listening deeply
to the poetry of trees
I become a leaf


a black purse of sky
unclasped and spilling silver
I hold out my hands



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for Calum  ☊

they straggle out of their black-houses
silently greeting the peaty air
as they untether their hopeful boats
leading them like dogs to the end of the grizzled pier

the sleep-fuddled sea rolls over and grumbles
into the thickened waist of morning
and the blue-breasted hills
breathe in the slanting sighs of heathered moors

hand-hewn oars slice through buttery water
drawing and quartering the awakening sea
with its insatiable craving for the rarefied taste
of smoked and salty Lewis men

with a careless wave and shrug of swollen shoulders
winter’s teasing tongue of storm lashes out
licking heaving decks
flicking crumbs of frozen fishermen into the greedy bay

wind-whipped dogs limp home and nudge the lamenting shore
with torn sails between their legs
without their singing masters and silver creels
they bring no solace to the widowed croft

Note: Black-houses were traditional thatched huts on the Isle of Lewis. Fires were built in the centre of the living area and there was no chimney.  The smoke escaped through the roof, blackening the interior of the dwelling.

folding ☊

the faded pink sweater still hangs
by the unravelled threads
of her life
from the broken hook
of my heart

edges worn thin and frayed
warp and weft remember
the shape of her body
but never
the scent of her skin

buttonless now
seams gaping as wide as grief
i fold into her
fingering the torn pocket for shreds of comfort
from the last crumpled tissue



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Go to page 2 of Debbie Strange's poetry

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