Spoken Word St. John’s is still going strong, and if you missed it on Sunday past, its featured reader, Leslie Vryenhoek, was kind enough to share one of the poems she read. Every Spoken Word St. John’s event has a featured reader, alongside an open mic. Leslie read some new work of hers, recently published in ARC.

“Antannae, Those Fine Hairs”
by Leslie Vryenhoek

A late night cut through a thicket
of headstones and the charge
came up in me. I flung out my arms—
……………………………………………….antennae
to catch the spirit wave. But you
clutched my wrist, pulled me
away and out, onto the lit
and trammelled street.

A pile of found things is spreading
across our white kitchen shelf: fused
green glass you brought home
from that burnt-out house, three
faded baseball cards discovered
behind the radiator the day a dart
went astray, a shard of plate
wearing General Hosp, two keys
to locks we don’t own, a rusty brad,
a bullet casing, and a lump
of melted aluminum.

Still, you won’t let me lay out
the fork we dug up on the beach,
the one with your initials
filigreed
into the shaft.
………………..Ghost fork, you whisper. Dead people
………………..touched this—though you can’t say how
………………..you picked that up.