MARINA GIPPS Poems

Because I watch you wake, I can never awaken.
Watching you sleep, I may never sleep.
And so sleep goes elsewhere to a place
too tedious to mention…
...

You weave in and out one last time.
A secret loneliness led you back to me.
I filled your void with more toxins
before you rose up on your moonlit spindrift.
...

Lanes of sky slag between telephone lines.

Broken roads burning off the day's
lingering heat.
...

Glass-bottom boats scanned warily by the far-off sun,
A lidless eye reflected on the waters of the frigid sound.

Mud by the shore molded by the imprints of many
...

The clock ticks back and forth
As an old woman swats a fly.
Her years of hunger are “shooed away”.
Her hands outstretched christ-like at times
...

O Catholic guilt!
His distant mother was cremated
somewhere in Italy.
...

He had a clean white shirt on
when he died.
The mystics were pleased-
No trail of saliva,
...

Where does that closed door go?
It mocks me, a small child,
my parents inside. They tell me
they are sleeping when I know
...

I feel the love of a flawed adoption.
A good enough reason to not go on living.
Dumb stork took a wrong turn as he broke his wing.
The saddest time for barren folk with no dreams
...

My mother gave me a silver pen
with Frank's name and birthday inscribed.
We never knew Frank but Father told us
he was a very lucky man,
...