"Fish Supper" & "Watching Dr. Zhivago with my Daughter" by Adele Evershed

Fish Supper

so much has been lost along with our Sunday best / we now have different types of

Christ tricks / and 60 second flicks filling the hole of us / all the new revivals /

prequels and sequels / are stories we stopped caring about long ago / tiny images

of insurrection / like all small things / pull on the heartstrings / for a techno second / yet we are more harpy than harp / and can treat the drownings as a

conversational starter / served with salmon / and the old white man sauce / give a

man a fish / blah, blah, blah / better the sweet words of a woman / instead of

letting them swim with the fishes / give any one who needs it / a fish / and then a

rod / so they can eat first / and fish later

Watching Dr, Zhivago With My Daughter

How you loved Dr. Zhivago / but I told you there was no poetry in snow / and you said it was a space to fill with other things / angels / and men whose reasons to leave you understood /

You told me I played tragedy like a balalaika / the same three strings over and over / a haunting melody of loss / so you went / dancing with the snowflake people / babbling they were made up of everything that was not here / not me / yet when the rent was due you nailed the stars / fixing them as a slipped cross / so I could find you / I put your bloody fingers to my mouth / a gesture that tasted oh so old /

Now the cold scolds my bones / and I choke from the ground up / like a snowflake I am made up of what is not there / and you are spinning rings far away / beyond the illusion / of stars / or redemption / still I always look for you / in the chaos of shapes leaving a bus / in every doorway / and at every special showing of Dr. Zhivago

Adele Evershed was born in Wales and has lived in Hong Kong and Singapore before settling in Connecticut. Her poetry and prose have been published in several online journals and print anthologies. She has been recently nominated for The Pushcart Prize for poetry, shortlisted for the Staunch Prize for flash fiction, and her novella-in-flash, The History of Hand Thrown Walls was shortlisted in the Reflex Press Novella Award.