Rose Mary Boehm- Three Poems

Another Mermaid Story

A small, brown village
on the Cornish coast.
Ruby married Fred.
She’d had enough of filing
in the ‘Museum for Fishing and Smuggling’.
Fred liked Ruby because she was round
and sleek as a seal.

A slight scent of ocean
hovered over her skin.

Ravenous triplets sucked her dry.
In the supermarket she pushed
a tank with three activated
missiles from aisle to aisle.

Ruby soon neglected them.
Preferred to watch
the silvery catches
in the harbour.

Fred hired a nanny. Took to her.
Ruby took to the fishermen.
Both grew into the comfortable
co-existence of mutual dislike.

Ruby disappeared.
Fred drank her health.
In the bar that night a fisherman
mentioned that he’d seen a selky
swim out into the Celtic Sea.

Bye, Mum

You took off, left behind your memories.

My brain’s gone off orbit.

Know what? As far as memories go

I like yours better.

Sitting on a pile of clothes; can’t find my socks.

Do you know what drugs do to your self?

Know what? As far as selves go

I like yours better.

The big empty house lives, whispers and threatens.

When I needed you, you lived your life, selfish cow.

Know what? As far as lives go

I like yours better.

It’s alright now. No it’s not.
You took off. And so did I.

Know what? As far as takeoffs go

I like yours better.

There was a time when it no longer hurt.

You took your CDs.

Know what? As far as music goes

I like yours better.

In the mornings the blue spiders of the early hours

crawl over me.

And it’s all over now.

Know what? As far as endings go,

I like mine better.

(first published in my poetry collection 'Tangents', 2010/11, UK)

clandestine

meet me at the old

victoria station hotel

make it eleven.

hookers, lovers, trains

pass sooty windows

don’t bring luggage

just remember

how I loved you

last winter in Antwerp.

your wet skin reflects

the almost light

under these high ceilings,

bent venetian blinds hide

curtains torn by time,

the station clock

has no mercy.



A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm lives and works in Lima, Peru. Author of two novels and a poetry collection published in 2011 in the UK, ‘TANGENTS’, her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in a good two dozen US poetry reviews as well as some print anthologies, and Diane Lockward’s The Crafty Poet. She won third price in in the 2009 Margaret Reid Poetry Contest for Traditional Verse (US), and has been a finalist in several GR contests, winning it in October 2014.