Meghan Ferrari grew up in Caledon, ON, and studied English Language and Literature at Queen’s University. She completed her Masters in Education at The University of Toronto, and presently shares her passion for creative writing with her students, as an English Teacher for the York Catholic District School Board. She is currently working on a collection of poetry.

Glow

 

A golden glow ascends,

and slips

into a slouched sky.

 

While an elongated ear

listens…

for the crinkle,

the crackle,

 

The brilliance of books burning.

 

A dignified demise

in decomposition;

A return to roots

redolent

with resurgence.

 

But it’s the future!

And you’ve escaped

Bradbury’s blaze.

 

Now pads,

popped like pills,

into grinders

that gurgle

and pulverize

 

Terminators of reason,

whose tongues toll

singular thought.

 

But the memory hole

is closing…

Milton and Marx,

mere murmurs.

 

Dissent is the digital age!

 

Subvert the public sphere,

and conceal the Phoenix.

In keys and in clouds…

 

Wist

 

Let’s pretend, you’d breathe,

tootsie tongue, missing tooth.

Down the drive where oil slithered onto Xs,

and wriggled around Os.

 

Red knees like liquorice,

race to the ravine.

And tangled, tumble

down the path of tawny leaves;

 

A yellow brick road,

 

At the foot of the gray birch it’s found.

A right of passage, left wing asunder.

An elongated pause…moist with indecision.

A seedbed of morality.

 

In the murky moonshine,

Infinite fingers ferry it home.

To the house awash in honey.

To the ivory hands that will heal.

 

And one day,

pluck your wings bare.

Snarl

 

Will it be a rip, or a slip —

the sound of two identities untwining?

 

Unwinding…

 

How will it go on?

This ivy, un-affixed,

without its mother mortar to mould to?

 

Detached,

does it descend to sediment

whose scent of independence

soils its evergreen gloss?

 

No, says the girl,

un-tethered in the yard,

on the set of swings she uses to smuggle the sky in.

 

She knows its rustle,

and the rancor of its reach.

 

And so she turns her tears to the tree,

to the sturdy structure,

to which it will creep to, climb up, and claim

as its own.