POETRY
      Jeff Guess — 'Memory Board'

It was almost entirely
about thrown shadows
everything had its own dim
supine and other shape
pulled out on the interstices
of the sun’s transitory geometry.
Those stairs now wind into a fog
of forgetfulness
from the one room
on the first or second landing
that memory reproduces
in monochrome
with that unrelenting irritant smell
of furniture polish
and flytox.
And just inside
the open doorway
a small squat vase
of week old aquilegia
and the sad confetti of their neglect
on the carpet.
These recollections
on the itinerant slide-show
of the mind
caught somewhere
between strangeness and mystery
still throwing shadows
on everything in the relief
of gathering darkness.