Poetry: Stations By Taryn Allan

Stations

An unseen smile, lipless

Painted in phosphorus

The curvature of a motorway bend at night

 

We hold our silence for the duration of the journey

Lily-fresh memory of the funeral a coffin-lid on our lips

Your mother’s body proceeding between the stations of the cross

Bounding the church on either side

Directing one-way traffic

 

Her rosary, an inheritance, hangs weightless from the rear-view mirror

Night-blank in its reflection

The cross a Janus-headed picture frame

Broken, bounding incompleteness

Fading into nothing

 

Cat’s eyes, lidless

Encrust the road 

Turning towards us in sightless awe

 

The reflection of a man-made light

Automatic writing upon a cracked black page

In a book never to be read

 

The vestibular glow of service stations emerge

Faceless promises of civility 

The thought of the dead-eyes within

Promising only further sadness

An altar of isolation

 

We drive on into the night 

Taryn Allan scribbles things into notebooks. Occasionally, those scribblings coalesce and have been known to appear in such places as the Horror Writers Association’s Poetry Showcase, A Thin Slice of Anxiety and Horror Sleaze Trash, amongst others.