Emma Wells is a mother, English teacher and enjoys writing creatively. Literary magazines and journals have published a range of her poems and short stories. Her debut novel, Shelley’s Sisterhood, is due to be published soon. Check out more of her work here.
Love
It fills cubby holes
where shadowy depths
quiver in obscurity,
cobwebbed, moth-eaten;
here spidery legs
touch velveteen heaven,
becoming skittishly reborn
scuttling upwards to lightbulb heaven.
Brittle walls suckle nectar
reforming concrete skin;
it sparkles, glows
in refractive Ray-bans
transferring hope,
adding spring-like steps
to each poignant passerby.
As I meander,
balmy kisses float
in lovers’ entwined hands
as wedding rites
encircled with halo gold;
I smile secretly
buoyant as helium
enthused by warming growth.
Lovers see lucidly here:
able to gaze back,
idolising softer tones
beneath metallic shields.
He smiles;
she mirrors him
capturing his look,
folding it into memories
as whisked egg to batter;
it bakes to proud fruition.
Podgy-peony feet of newborns;
Nan’s door-wedge toasted cheese;
rain making tracks
along a windowpane
like escaping bolts of lightning:
searching to root,
mooring a foundation
yet patter to tributaries
losing purpose,
gliding to outer edges
like capsized whitewater rafters.
All hold notes of love,
persistence.
Love fanfares loudly
as carnival cacophonies;
trilling warmth
as heated car seats
after stormy gales;
Love grabs two-handed,
megaphone-proud,
eclipsing forgotten planets
leaving brittle, icy shells:
pointless skeletal skittles
as obsolete Pluto.
Love is dappled light
filtered through verdant leaves;
dew-inked grass,
awakening, cleansing souls;
running in beaded rain,
coating heated skin:
cooling as bobbing ice cubes
in globular drinks –
a microcosm of Earth
held aloft in thinking hands
as a chalice cup –
all are love.
Now it pervades more-so:
stitching yellow humanity
amidst blue empathy
into honour badges;
heroism is eaten for breakfast,
crunching fast,
rising to action;
soldiers offer fractured smiles
as they face enemies
while invisible medals
swing as suns
around lions’ manes
resplendent, gleaming
beneath tired, striving heads –
for courage is love.
It grows hastily now;
I feel its tree roots
lift gleefully as spilling waves
beneath my conscious feet.
From the Editor:
We hope that readers receive In Parentheses as a medium through which the evolution of human thought can be appreciated, nurtured and precipitated. It will present a dynamo of artistic expression, journalism, informal analysis of our daily world, entertainment of ideas considered lofty and criticism of today’s popular culture. The featured content does not follow any specific ideology except for that of intellectual expansion of the masses.
Founded in late 2011, In Parentheses prides itself upon analysis of the current condition of intelligence in the minds of these young people, and building a hypothesis for one looming question: what comes after Post-Modernism?
The idea for this magazine stems from a simple conversation regarding the aforementioned question, which drew out the need to identify our generation’s place in literary history.
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By In Parentheses in IP Volume 7
32 pages, published 1/15/2022
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By In Parentheses in Volume 6
80 pages, published 10/15/2020
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