Beverly M. Collins is author of the books, Quiet Observations: Diary thought, Whimsy and Rhyme and Mud in Magic. Her poems have appeared in California Quarterly, Poetry Speaks! A year of Great Poems and Poets, The Hidden and the Divine Female Voices in Ireland, The Journal of Modern Poetry, Spectrum, The Altadena Poetry Review and many others.  Winner of a 2019 Naji Naaman Literary prize in Creativity. Collins, whose been nominated for the Pushcart Prize twice and a prize winner for the California State Poetry Society; was born in Delaware and grew up in New Jersey (USA).

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Chain

We were spinning tops in a restless world.
Chained to wingless habits.
Foolishness mapped our plans before wisdom
could seat itself within us.

Across his eyebrows, the dark crease of
night settled in. As he expressed himself
to me, his eyes searched the floor for
the last broken pieces of our story.

Our bond had lost its breath.
This room; a cave-of-echos where joy once
pulsated. We were once faces-of-freedom.

Neither of us could recall the spiral that led
us here. What happened to the bell-harmony
in our song? Why are we center-stage and
limp in life’s balcony at the same time?

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Back Order

There’s no roof on this feeling.
It has climbed its way from the ground up
and into the “everywhere” that is me. Hunger
is in a full spar with vacancy.

From the moment I met him, my beingness lost
a tug-of-war with gravity like I’ve never felt
before. Like he is earth itself and I’m a 2-ton
rock in freefall.

I move through my days as if nothing new has
happened. He consumes my thoughts. I wonder
what he is doing right now. Then 2 hours later,
I wonder what he’s doing right now. He is a
package with no clear delivery date. A kind of
love-on-back-order, so to speak.

There’s a lot of hope/anguish/excitement as
I anticipate/hope/wait and hope, wait…wait.