Poems by Rebecca Jane Hare

Walk on the wild side

Rebecca Jane Hare

Published on
page 32 of Tarot #5
(Dec 2022)

Urgent intergenerational
Redress and preservation
Ruthlessness is blinding
Remove the bandages

Merciful atmosphere
Under blurry blue skies
Peering through the misty
Semipermeable brown

Crumbling fort walls in ruins
Foggy panes, heavy rain
Windows ajar for smashing
Ceiling made of glass

Sharpen your darts
Destination is your weapon
Take aim to remedy
Through camera lens befriend

Flaky armchair oaths
Conceal fading hopes
Triumphs self-taught
Tightrope taut, time to walk

Hiding behind complacency
The decency of tasks
Gives momentum
To masked up languishing

The beach is calling
Blasting sand, raging high tide
Walk on the wild side
Counter culture seeping

A seaweed hat
Disguises the weeping

Souls search

Rebecca Jane Hare

Published on
page 35 of Tarot #5
(Dec 2022)

Long ago you burned
Their children in church
Locked behind heavy
Wooden doors. Blinded
By what you interpreted
As warfare orders.

Their fight was not lost
In surrender you told
Aching hearts and minds
Float unfound above ground
In your nightmares
And in your daughter’s.

Married forever
To a soldier’s cause
See-through used gauze
After the jam is pressed
Sticky ethical fibre
Of translucent left behind

Essence of the extracted.
Grow lavender halos
Of higher purpose
As you toss and prowl
Behind the picket fences
Of your stolen homes.

Unmarked graves
Play forever in your mind
In every immortal
Apricot morning
You see their searching
Non-combatant silhouettes.

Miss Q

Rebecca Jane Hare

Published on
page 56 of Tarot #5
(Dec 2022)

Hail the humble (we’ll call her Miss Q)
The quiet one in meetings
Breathing silent spatial relations
In her unspoken mind
Like wool passed many times
Underneath the table

Miss Q doesn’t need glasses
In corridors and boardrooms
Like a detective, she sees beyond
Through transparent screens and skins
Two-faced smiles, folded arms
And the rubbing of hands

Miss Q reads cues
Through thinly guised veils
Of obnoxious self-importance
Ego tussles and torn reputations
Where a battlefield undercurrent burns
But no one yells, “Fire in the hole!”

Miss cal-Q-lates the risks
Aspiring chiefs speak over her white flag
Correct her in front of peers
According to their own preferences
They do not ask for her opinion
Gather buy-in, or guarantees

Miss Q is discerning
Determining sweet from sour
The secret story to her success
She holds her tongue

And swallows only what is good for her
She has read all of the small print

Miss Q makes a memorable tamarind curry