Rebecca Faulkner
I am trying to remember —
corners of your newspaper curled
in a November breeze, mothballs
in your herringbone tweed. Stubborn
grief, my coat pulled tight. Exhausted
kitchen, tap dripping. Tobacco smoke
an unkempt desk, faded maps of the coastal
northwest. Frigid mornings, twigs snapping
my childhood terrors caught on bracken.
Bronze paperweights, lemon rind, final pints
at closing time. Lit with drink & filthy
jokes, RAF ballads sung in the tub. Wrinkled
fingers, postage stamps, all my words returned
unread. I am trying to remember you —
an arrowhead of geese, a slant of winter sun.
Rebecca Faulkner
REBECCA FAULKNER is a London-born poet and arts educator based in Brooklyn. The author of Permit Me to Write My Own Ending (Write Bloody Press, 2023), her work appears in New York Quarterly, Solstice Magazine, The Maine Review, CALYX Press, Berkeley Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She is the 2022 winner of Sand Hills Literary Magazine’s National Poetry Contest, and the 2021 Prometheus Unbound Poetry Competition. Rebecca was a 2021 Poetry Fellow at the Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts. She holds a BA in English Literature & Theatre Studies from the University of Leeds, and a Ph.D. from the University of London. She is currently at work on her second collection, exploring female identity and artistic endeavor. www.rebeccafaulknerpoet.com
Art: “There is Beauty that Remains” by Kenneth Ricci, Cut/Paste Paper Collage