Four 5 line poems by Louise Wilford

My sister’s tattoo

The unicorn isn’t bashful. It appears each time
your sloppy sweater falls off your shoulder, or your t-shirt
is too thin. Its childish lines ripple as you move your arm;
its cerulean body has no diffidence. Cheerful and over the top,
it’s the thing people notice but you forget. It suits you.

Painting the study

Let me lay here for a while,
dust sheets rushed in wormcasts at my toes.
I’m floating on a sea, adrift on waves of night-blue clouds.
Beyond, cars surge and ebb, the wax and wane of other lives.
But let me crowd-surf gentle fingers of thought, remembering.

Painting the study 2

Twisting a room from that to this.
Capturing a dream that slithers off, that won’t be caught –
replaced by other wraiths – fire-red or Chanel grey, sand
or cloud or dusk or sunset pink or cyclamon.
Promises that won’t be pinned to the plaster.

Jigsaw Man

You are the edges I struggle with,
the crusted hasps of a sea-chest half-buried in silt.
You are the winter sky that hides itself in cloud-fur,
the loops whose slots elude –
tongue pressed into the wrong groove.