Red Door #28 - The TYPEWRITTEN issue

What is grass?
There’s a god in the grass
and it tells us our purpose
which is to tear it all up, bit by bit.
All day we take our communion.
We inhabit a holy carpet.
There’s a voice in the trees
and a drone in the sky. To eat,
to sleep, to stand and try to die
is our purgatory. It’s easy enough
to say it – ‘weather’ is a verb.
We go along with rituals.
We entertain possibilities.
Dust rises. Fresh grass. We know
where we are going and will go
in our time – unless pushed.
We are held. We are patient.
The operation is tolerated.
Resistance is offered – otherwise
it would be obvious. We are
handled. We struggle. We dig in.
There is a thing we learn and
it comes to us naturally.
Jack Thacker
United Kingdom
Going to the Well
Lani O’Hanlon
Ireland
Soon
we return freely to the green
of our eyes, of our minds
and lower our heads to it.
We understand how to suffer –
maggots, blindness, foot rot, worms,
loneliness, yes, and mastitis.
We are, despite it all, used
to it all and its violence.
Three wells,
as in a fairytale;
the first well is dry,
the second well is dry,
the third well is dry.
A woman asks if there is a well committee
someone to tell us where the water went.
We are thirsty then,
desperate for a drink.
A woman climbs down into the well
begins to dig with an old tin cup.
We wait for a trickle
some hint of moisture to wet our lips
with whatever cure is here.
She holds it up,
we lean forward to see
but in the cup there is only money.
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