Joe Bishop
Your keen wakes goldfish.
Your voice picks my ossicles,
Octaves purple with lupins.
You pitch banker’s lamp
At my dodging noggin.
I fear for the alarm clock.
Watching Wheel of Fortune,
I howl mad guesses
Just to make you laugh.
You wear your mermaid gown,
Clutch a bunch of black roses,
Your freckles powdered,
In a photo on the mantle,
Protected behind glass.
JOE BISHOP’s work has appeared in journals such as The New Quarterly, Plenitude Magazine, Tar River Poetry, Innisfree Poetry Journal, and Riddle Fence and is featured on the League of Canadian Poets’ website. He is a recipient of a Newfoundland & Labrador Arts & Letters award for poetry. His first chapbook of poetry, Dissociative Songs, was published in 2021 by Frog Hollow Press. Joe has poems forthcoming in The Puritan.