SurVision Magazine

One Cleft Moon


The pretty girl's neighbor drank her beauty like wine

Kept her in his breast pocket for slow days

when he danced with her silhouette
to the tune of the Tennessee waltz

Alone behind curtains he imagined her waist
fitting into the crux of his arm

and she said bring me more than I asked for

So he carved a cleft moon into her bedroom door
protecting her from dreams
of minotaurs creeping on little minotaur feet
without permission or even some small regret

He gave her a red ribbon to tie back
the noose of her gladness
Stroked her black coil of braids
that fell like a tar bridge across his fence

She danced in the twilight with just her shimmery whimsy
so bright was her gossamer shift of unparalleled shine

The pretty girl knew all the words to his songs
and reached out to show him the keen flutter
of her vermillion heart

Her kindness flooded his rearview mirror
where he never looked back to see her

caught like a butterfly stuck to a pin





We Sing Ourselves Back


We are born singing,
orchid air in freefall beneath our trapeze feet.
We open our jaws wide,
balloon our throats
swing ancestral anaconda notes down
across the emerald city.
We dance antic swags, ellipses, somersaults,
wound the air
with our bass, treble, bellowing melodies.
The women go first
and the men sing back in waves,
above the recitative.
And later with dusty feet,
we wander like leathery kites
shipwrecked with words.
Wanting again to float above it all,
we drill underground instead
to look for our voice,
deep inside the belly of the whale.
We sing ourselves back
and become once again whole.





Blue Bowl


I like the way you wrap your hand round my fingers

so that I feel bird-boned and small.

I inhale you deeply
push past
shoals of lethargy.

You circle my shoulders

draw me close to your side
as a ribbon
holds hair.

I slipped a silver ring
into your pocket

intending to settle you down.

But sometimes when wind whips
the tops of the cedars

and the white dog howls on the stair

I scrape my tin spoon
on the blue china bowl

you hold
and tether me here.






Judith Neale is a Canadian poet, mentor, educator, opera singer and spoken word performer. She has published five collections of her poetry, the latest two being Quiet Coming of Light (Leaf Press, 2014), and Splendid in its Silence, which won the SPM Publications (London) Poetry Book Competition and was published in April 2017. She has also published her short stories and has been a finalist for The Pat Lowther award. Her poems were shortlisted for the Gregory O'Donoghue Poetry Prize in Ireland.