Café with mirrors

Dec 8, 2023 | 2024 Winter - Bi+ World Wide Web, Poetry

By Sue Vickerman

In the back corner by the old iron radiator
we discuss which we’d go for
of the two women at the next table gazing into each other,
one in a sculpted hat, one in a tightly-belted mac.

When I reach up to prink at your lovely felt petals
her astonishing florette turns its eye on me.

When you lean over to lick milk-froth from my upper lip
a flick-knife movement in the corner of my vision
is a pink stamen, a quick snaking-out, a side-view of a mouth’s
aperture pronged-at then entered into.

I bite, seeing you looking right past me
at the glint of a buckle, a killer heel.

Sue Vickerman is a writer and literary translator working in the north of England where she edits for indie literary press Naked Eye Publishing. She is happily in an interesting throuple with M (a man) and J (a woman).

Related Articles

Even Though

By Bailey Merlin In another universe, I am a good mother; in this one, my mother doesn’t ask me, “When are you having kids?” Even though I don’t want children, I have a list of baby names on my phone, pulling up ancestors to match with Merlin. A decorated combat...

read more