polemical poetry to prickle the politics of "permanent austerity"
thistles stretch their prickly arms afar
Fear of Letter Boxes
She listens all morning for the letter box’s warning
that causes her pen to skid across a page.
Careers downstairs scanning the door mat,
gingerly pokes a pile of junk mail where buff
envelopes often lurk like adders under compost.
Opens as if defusing a bomb.
Hospital appointments are welcome as negative test results.
Shreds Reader’s Digest’s practical joke.
Down grading her fear to code orange at a drift of white letters,
knows even these are not always innocent as they appear.
Sometimes, the friendly face of familiar handwriting
or an invitation surprising as a modest lottery win.
Still no ‘all clear’ by 12 o’ clock,
she peeps from curtains,
catching the post man passing her gate,
exhales as if missed out of a house to house search.
Sundays, strikes and snow, she is a school kid
whose bully has been excluded for a few days.
Fiona Sinclair is the editor of the on line poetry magazine Message in a Bottle. Her first full collection was published in 2014 by Lapwing Press.