Tuesday, April 14, 2026

Antoinette Vella Payne

Low Tide.


Breeze smells like seaweed

Sand & salted egg

Across the bay 

Swimmers’ voices carry


Melted in seagulls‘ song

Gulls screech in harmony

Along with aircraft’s skyward hum

Soon the breeze is all that’s left


I stand where low tide

Reaches distant shores

Walk over pebbles & seaweed

A woman comes to collect


She feeds her garden

Instead of egg shells & fish bones

Bags of dried seaweed

Before high tide takes it back




Crayolas


Wind blows blue 

Ripples in the pool

Like a new sweet thing


On pink & white animal cookies

Colours call to me in reverie

Ice cold beer blushes my face


Eyes burn red in a chlorinated breeze

My inner fish swallowing air

Goes under 


A blanket surrounds

Beneath an aquatic sunset

Meshed with pink & white roses


Outside the lines and grandfathered in

From half a century ago

A floating bird




What Are Ya Gonna Do?


Creation’s creatures

Fruit flies & jelly fish twin designs

Built like humans

Mouth to bowel


Arid winds bluster bold

Ride me home with

Leon Russell singing

this song for you 


And I take it

Like an ogre

Grotesque in my mind

Singing like the Seraphim


Dancing like a bull

Light on my feet

With a sway

My talents unclaimed


Standing in the ocean 

Waves & wind dripping

Down my face

In sheer gratitude for solitude


Summer sizzled before 

Marine layer made moss

Mild enough to brush away

Yet the taste lingered


Children learned rhymes

Changing a line here & there

To fit the times

Eenie meenie mineee mo


Lit a match

To a snail

Schizophrenia lurked in

Tart grapes budding on the vine


We ate them anyway

Letting go of guilt

Every time we reach for dopamine

Over any good reason



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