Bernard Pearson is an accomplished writer whose work has appeared in over 130 publications globally, including The Madrigal, Aesthetica Magazine, The Edinburgh Review, and Crossways. His poetry collection, In Free Fall, was published by Leaf by Leaf Press in 2017. In 2019, he earned second prize in The Aurora Prize for Writing for his poem Manor Farm. Bernard is also a biographer, an award-winning short story writer, and a novelist, with three crime fiction novels to his name. His writing spans genres, showcasing his versatility and deep engagement with literature.

Catechism

Where?
Oysters were originally
The pauper’s friend ,
The tear drop pearl,
From whence she came
The grit of love
proofed by passion,
Fired in the oven of desire,
So are we all unpacked,
onto this pin ball machine
Of a planet.

Flipped between
Lip and cup, lip and cup, lip and clip

Why?
mewledd and mooned
Over by the clowns
Of adoration.
Then the motor
Of life starts to tick,
And you learn
The goodbye patois
You become
Chattles of your own story

Flipped between lip and cup
lip and cup, lip and cup

How ?
The immodesty of it
Walking away from
A past you were never
Meant to know
To a future as fragile
As a goldfinches’s egg
And as knoweable
As a mustang’s soul.

Flipped between lip and cup
lip and cup, lip and cup

Gaze

The measure for beauty
Is In the eyes of the infant
Mini globes whose distant
Lands mesmerise their parents
Like those of a snake charmer
Or the face of a lost grandparent
In a photograph that locks their
Past into the one dimension
Wherein their heart is held secure.

Are we there Yet?

My parents took a map
Very seriously they would
Ceremoniously unfold it
Across the Windscreen
like the Magna Carta
so they could
‘See where we are going’
In a kind of pin the tail
on the donkey
With imminent death
As the prize.