Ears
by Kevin Reid

Once upon a time … easy chairs
for parental voices.

In rebellious adolescence,
hanging eager by the wayside,
they stood out like naked exhibitionists
waiting for the next banging response.

Perpetual voices of numerous narrators:

the babble of baby-talk,
the nameless noise of childhood,
the screeching cries of my newborn,
the giggling cruel capers of a lover’s infidelity

all strained through dunes of skin and bone.

In the change of life
these ever growing flower heads of flesh
pollinate my head with the white noise of tinnitus

and I shrink.

 
* * *

“Ears” is copyright 2013 by Kevin Reid and comes from his chapbook Body Voices, published by Crisis Chronicles Press. Body Voices — 34 pages, saddle-stitch bound with a white and textured navy card stock cover — is available for $7 (plus $2 for postage) from Crisis Chronicles Press, 3344 W. 105th Street #4, Cleveland, Ohio, USA.  If you’re ordering from an address outside the USA, please add $3 to cover additional postage.


Cover image by Steven B Smith – agentofchaos.com

 

Kevin Reid lives and works as a librarian in Angus, Scotland. He studied English Literature at the University of Dundee. Back in the 90s he spent some time living in a tipi community in the southern Spanish mountains, which led to visionary encounters in peyote ceremonies. After a brief spell of teacher training he chose to study librarianship. He has a key role in organising Scotland’s longest running teenage book award. His poetry has appeared in various publications, such as, Pushing Out the Boat, Scottish Poetry Review, heavy bear, The Recusant, and Counterexample Poetics. Body Voices is his first published chapbook.