Tough Love
He lies out flat along the bench; his head lost in her lap, feet barely touching the ground. She leans over, wanting to plant her lips on his, rouse him, like a princess might in a modern fairy tale, release him from the spell of sleep, but he’s no prince - there’s engine oil beneath his fingernails – and though his eyes are tightly shut, he’s not asleep; he’s hiding, like the child who thinks he can’t be found by those he cannot see. He’s hiding from that busybody, Time, who’s intruded every day since their first sight, and who, despite his pleas, declines to stop.
Doctor of the Broken Heart
“Claudine, 31, slim, business-owning, double divorcee and incurable romantic, seeks soulmate for wining and dining and romantic evenings in.” The perfect match! He need look no further; he liked his women rich and damaged, so he could heal their pain with his placebo love sugared with flattery and rose-petal fantasies that they would swallow whole, and marvel at the magic of his medicine until the day they had to pay the bill.
Anniversary
I said he could have anything for our anniversary; he asked for space. I grudgingly agreed, believing when stretched we’d snap back together, closer than before, but the gap kept growing filling with drifts of bitterness much too treacherous to navigate and the thaw I waited for did not come: there were no warm words to melt the silence, no spring flowers to mark his return, and hope stayed low on the horizon refusing to rise. Yet still I find myself in the kitchen listening for his key turning in the door, and making enough tea for two.
Nigel Kent is a three times Pushcart Prize nominated poet (2019, 2020, 2021) and reviewer who lives in rural Worcestershire. He is an active member of the Open University Poetry Society, managing its website and occasionally editing its workshop magazine.
He has been shortlisted for several national competitions and his poetry has appeared in a wide range of anthologies and magazines.
He is the author of: Unmuted, a collection of ekphrastic poems (Hedgehog Press, 2021); Saudade (Hedgehog Press, 2019) his first collection; Psychopathogen, a pamphlet exploring the effects of the pandemic; A Voice and A Vision, a book of photopoetry in collaboration with photographer, Nick Browne; and two poetry conversations with Sarah Thomson, Thinking You Home and A Hostile Environment (Hedgehog Press). His new chapbook, Benchwarmers, will be published in 2023 (Hedgehog Press).
In 2021 and 2022 he was shortlisted for the Saboteur Award for Reviewer of Literature.
Flight of the dragonfly 