Poem #2
Joyce Carol Vincent of Wood Green, North London died in 2003 at age 38. She had been dead on her couch for 3 years before her remains were discovered. Her televison was on; unopened Christmas gifts on the floor.
Her nose was left crooked after a crashed sprint into Anonymity,
a former lover shaded in with the greys of wage work, new lovers.
And failing: the t.v., chocolate with chilis, salt, or raspberry flavor,
His fingertips that dug into her hip in precisely the same spot
where Attitude had placed them in polaroids of her youth.
They felt more callous than the various refusals to commit to her.
She ran.
Once while learning to fly
beneath a place called Sky City, her lofty goals refused
to meet Its peak with more than an allusion of a vision like contentment.
For long days, sometimes well into nights, she studied how to scale expectation.
Eventually she even managed to learn to be forgotten.
darlene anita scott 