Bronwyn Haynes

How to Peel a Kiwi

My friend can slice one end off a kiwi,
take it between her smooth,
caramel-colored fingers,

slip the business end of a spoon
beneath the skin and around
the circumference of the fruit,

then brace the other end against
her thumbs, and invert the skin.
It is beautiful to watch:

her strong, slender fingers
authoritative against the fruit’s flesh,
the process quick and perfect,
the kiwi round and smooth as an egg.




How my Morning Never Starts

I spring out of bed an hour early
for my busy day, maybe eat something
truly artsy for breakfast--something
you’d order at a sidewalk café in Paris.

Then barefoot, coffee in hand,
I pad into my sparse, brightly-lit office,
and it’s just me and the bare floorboards
and a typewriter on a humble but sturdy desk,

my mug, and perhaps a stoneware jar
with a stubble of pencils issuing forth
from the top, like weeds.
I want to have the discipline

to write a poem every day, to publish a book
every couple of years, and to justify my closeted hope
of someday being important to someone;
to write a couple’s love poem;

to save one teenaged girl’s life with the right stanza;
to be the face on the inside of a cover
that made poetry real to someone.
Instead, I am scribbling this poem on Post-It notes—

an improvement over scrawling verse
on the thighs of my jeans
or the pale flesh of my forearms--
jostling with the motion of the car, hoping

no one pays enough attention to me,
to wonder what I’m writing.




Bronwyn E. Haynes is a member of the Quick and Dirty Poets, and has been published in the Mad Poets Review; the Edison Literary Review; Compass Rose; Up and Under; and Thatchwork, the Delaware Valley Poets Anthology. Her photography has appeared in Lumina. Her favorite things include: hot coffee on a cold train platform, exceptionally crunchy leaves in the fall, and a good Riesling.
 

Current Issue:
June 2012

Kendall A. Bell
Nicole Borello
Robert Demaree
Carol Lynn Grellas
Bronwyn Haynes
Karen Kelsay
Timothy Pilgrim
Robert Lavett Smith

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