Tessera

Jane Dougherty

@janedougherty47.bsky.social

Writer of fiction and poetry, lives in a green fortress. Not interested in 'communities'. Learn to live together, the rest of the natural world manages to. Visit my Substack https://substack.com/@janedougherty47 for short fiction and poetry

2464 Posts823 Follower 627 Folgt

Merril D. Smith @merrildsmith.bsky.social · 6d ago

Good morning! Happy Friday! For #PoemsAbout #LastTrain Thank you, as always to @alanparrywriter.co.uk and @thebrokenspine.co.uk

Poem:

Vantage Point

I never rode the City of New Orleans
or the Orient Express, no train to Marrakesh
or across frozen steppes,

I’ve heard freight trains sigh,
clang, and clatter, just a trace
of Woody Guthrie and hobo blues

in their doleful whistles
as they carry chemicals and coal.

My dad wanted railroad magic,
sleeper berths gently rocking him through
western mountains and deserts,

“Such beautiful vistas,” he wrote.

I hold the postcard,
braked at the junction of memory and regret,

we think there will always be another train.

Andy Williamson @andywilliamson.com · 6d ago

Good morning everyone, still not much writing time but always good to write something about trains, so here's a wee draft for #PoemsAbout #LastTrain. Thanks @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk as always! #poem #poetrycommunity

Late train to Dundee

I run for a seat as
the day slides shut.
Ticket gates, the noise,
wheels feeling for grip.

A coal-black city evaporating,
tenement stone, brick, darkness,
the bridge where the city is lost.
And you.

Steel and diesel, dark fields blur.
My palm on the cold glass.
At Inverkeithing the line forks,
as the land begins to open.

Through salt-hardened towns:
Dalgety Bay, Aberdour, Burntisland.
Shuttered fronts,
sea-worn stone.

Then harbour lights, iron hush.
This river holds no shape
until the final curve,
and you.

Jen Thorne @jenthorne.bsky.social · 6d ago

Happy #PoemsAbout day everyone. Here is my offering for #LastTrain. I can't wait to read everyone else's. With thanks as always to @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk Have a great weekend all ❤️ #poetry #choo-choo

The Last Train

I am a witness
to the lairy, blaring call
of rowdy rogues returned from revelry.

The subdued quiet
of the nurse,
longing to kick off sensible shoes
and dance.

The hushed husband
accepting the gin‑soaked airing
of his inadequacy.

The impatient sigh
of the lost girl,
searching for
the last breath of warmth
before the cold night claims her.

I am a witness
to the carriage as confessional,
to the tracks that hum with stories
no one meant to tell.

I am a witness
to the sway of strangers
bound together
for one brief, rattling moment,
before scattering like sparks
into the dark beyond the platform.

I am a witness.

Jane Dougherty @janedougherty47.bsky.social · 6d ago

This #PoemsAbout #LastTrain for @thebrokenspine.co.uk is unashamedly nostalgic/sentimental. The world is just too awful for more misery writing.

Jen the Feisty Librarian @feistywaters.com · last wk.

Fuck. Glen Hansard was awesome. www.theguardian.com/music/2026/j...

Glen Hansard, Oscar-winning Irish singer-songwriter, dies aged 56 in motorcycle crash

Frontman of chart-topping band the Frames had huge success as the star of 2007 romantic drama Once

theguardian.com

Fiftywords @fiftywords.bsky.social · 2w ago

This #PoemsAbout #BadHabits is taken from my current collection looking at the importance of Gaelic sport in Ireland. Many thanks to @thebrokenspine.co.uk and @alanparrywriter.co.uk (The curse of Mayo is explained in the comments)

Mayo Keegan goes down after the whistle, hands flat on the Croke Park grass, as if the ground itself
might steady what is left. Around him, green and red do not move,
no anger, no leaving, only the long habit of staying
when there is nothing more to say. Since '51 the years have gathered, hope stretched across generations,
children grown old
before the dream was filled. They call it a curse, but what endures so long can only be devotion:
to believe again, still. Green and red against grey skies,
fields broken by stone. The Atlantic always pressing, a county that leans westward,
yet never falls.
Exile has thinned it, but the voices return each summer,
airports and ferries full of those who never lost the pull
of pitch and parish. In Mayo, the game is the rosary recited on Croagh Patrick, the fiddle in a quiet kitchen, the sea-wind carving faces,
the cheer that refuses silence. A grandfather folds the paper,
knowing the score before he looks. A son stands at the door,
keys still in hand, listening. A child is lifted onto a shoulder,
told it will come right someday. All of them carry it, not hope alone, but habit, the weight of returning again,
and calling that belief.

Bernard Pearson @bernp.bsky.social · 2w ago

Huge thanks to @thebrokenspine.co.uk and @alanparrywriter.co.uk for hosting #PoemsAbout #BadHabits here's one from me will enjoy reading all the others

Reading in Bed
In bed we write
me in short hand,
you in long script.
Our words lie naked
each sentence stripped.
and with dawn the
sheets that have
been written upon
make no sense,
for you are gone.
and this is not Ulysses's
Life in a day
it is death in a morning,
as you take your
unopened book,
and walk away.

Bernard Pearson

DrNaturegirl @drnaturegirl.debbiemross.co.uk · 2w ago

Hello #PoemsAbout contributors and #Poetry Pals. For this week’s #BadHabits theme I had something in mind but couldn’t quite getcto it. Didn’t have much time for it, to be fair. Thanks @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk for these challenges. Busy day. Will catch up when I can.

Jen Thorne @jenthorne.bsky.social · 2w ago

Happy Friday all. I hope you have a good one, but if you aren't and need cheering up, I suggest you skip this one! #PoemsAbout #BadHabits #Poetry @thebrokenspine.co.uk @alanparrywriter.co.uk

Bad Habits

My teeth dig trenches
into the wet flesh of my cheeks,
a wound I can reopen
when I need to feel
I am still here.

I don’t bite my nails anymore.
No jagged edges,
no easy evidence
for anyone to point at
and say they’re worried.

I bleach the nicotine
from my fingers,
scrub until
they look like hands
that have never grasped
at embers.

I eat in the car
with the radio off,
chewing quickly,
as if someone might catch me
in the act of needing too much.

I cry in the bathroom,
sound swallowed by towels,
the mirror offering back
only indifference.

I build a version of myself
that passes inspection.
Tidy. Steady.
The version of truth
that doesn’t make people
shift in their seats.

Don’t let them see.
Don’t let them worry.
Don’t give them power.
Don’t give them a reason
to leave.

Kyla Houbolt @luaz.bsky.social · 2w ago

#PoemsAbout #BadHabits, @thebrokenspine.co.uk I really thought this one was in my collection Surviving Death, but apparently not! So here is Downhill, Second Hand:

Downhill, Second Hand

I catch a whiff.
Miss smoking like a long lost dog so
heck, buy a pack, light up,
goddam that is
too
good.

Maybe a
couple bottles
of wine. Why not?
though I quit that
years ago too. Ah.
Slides down
real nice.

It's all like it used to be.
Feeling fine,
I call an old friend
on the old landline.

She comes over
looking sassy and slick
and I pour her a glass, say
Damn, Death, that outfit is
so seductive. Tell me,
where do you shop?

Merril D. Smith @merrildsmith.bsky.social · 2w ago

Good morning and happy Friday! For #PoemsAbout #BadHabits Thank you to @thebrokenspine.co.uk and @alanparrywriter.co.uk

Poem:
The Art of the Lie

So well-practiced
your facile words become habit,

you crown canards
with laurel

though there’s a slip,
a tongue-tied trip
over tangled word vines

you stumble,
then deny

what everyone can see
(does even your mirror lie?)

yet, the robins will sing--
and canaries in the mines,

we listen for thunder,
now come the storms.

Dean Norton @zentinl.bsky.social · 2w ago

It's #PoemsAbout Friday. Let's talk about #badhabits. Thanks to @alanparrywriter.co.uk and @thebrokenspine.co.uk #poetrycommunity #poetry #poem #poems #skypoets #blueskypoets #blueskypoetry #poetsofbluesky #skypoet #writingcommunity

Jane Dougherty @janedougherty47.bsky.social · 2w ago

For #PoemsAbout #BadHabits and @thebrokenspine.co.uk

John Chmura @johnchmura.bsky.social · 2w ago

#PoemsAbout #BadHabits @thebrokenspine.co.uk I will put s reading in the comments.

BADASS HABITS

Not to be overshadowed by Jane
Fonda or Joan Baez or a flying Sally Field
they were the OG and primeval punks
jamming acoustic in tie-dye and jeans
no nine to five to tie them down
but 24/7 crushing on Christ
tryna make a better world
one coffeehouse one CYO
one flower power park at a time.

Yes they were healing the sick
and teaching us all the while with love
in their thoughts and in their words
in what they had done
and what they had never failed to do
not counting rosaries glued to a pew
getting the vulnerable off the streets
trading fresh linen for bloody sheets
neither vicarious always hard core
no matter who knocked they opened the door.

On the perpetual first two or three gather
at the facility where their Sister Felicity lives
but never leaves the past behind her
on a garden bench under golden elms,
power chords off her grid and the lyrics
she wrote like herself swirling in steamy
and silent kaleidoscopic hallucinations,
but when her soulmates reach the chorus
she hums along in quivered but perfect harmony
hint of a smile sneaking through closed eyelids
and Badass Habits rocks again.

Kyla Houbolt @luaz.bsky.social · 3w ago

For #PoemsAbout #ExitWounds, @thebrokenspine.co.uk , I'll offer *Ambush* (which appears in my new collection, Mapless):

Ambush

she chases the gulls into the sky
for the sheer doing of it,
feet bare on the cold wet sand
the thrill of that, and the shock
of a sudden wave catching her at the knees

knowing a warm embrace
waits just there, she turns to it

damned memory, stubborn as barnacles
time can't scrape you off, you seduce with delight
then turn to stab and rend. So
remember this: he's dead, and
never really wanted you.

rather be a flightless bird or better,
a sand snail, to burrow away,
no taunting wing-borne dreams
to steal a small dark peace.

Fiftywords @fiftywords.bsky.social · 3w ago

Here’s my contribution for #PoemsAbout #ExitWounds Thanks as ever to @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk

Créacht na Staire
The Wound of History The empire sailed away, or so the history book said, a small engraving of ships
diminishing into weather. But it had already hidden
inside the mouth.
Our rivers answered
to names they had not chosen.
Mountains were corrected. Fields divided themselves
obediently on maps.
At school, we were given rulers. We learned to draw straight lines, to underline the subject, circle the object,
and call possession grammar. The old words survived
as contraband: in kitchens, at wakes, under the breath of women who knew a language could be beaten
without being killed Still, when we speak,
the wound opens: claim, clear, settle,
own. A conqueror's verbs, passed down
as ordinary speech.
The flag was lowered. The alphabet remained, some letters missing,
others drilled into order. And somewhere beneath each careful sentence, the tongue remembers
what was taken from it.

Jen Thorne @jenthorne.bsky.social · 3w ago

Yay it's #PoemsAbout day again. Here is my offering to @thebrokenspine.co.uk for #ExitWounds Have a good weekend everyone 😊 #Poetry #Home

Exit Wounds

We close the door on twelve years,
on a house that learned our footsteps,
moulded its walls around our living,
and sheltered us through every storm.

Now it stands
hollow,
echoing bedtime stories and laughter,
whispered fears,
the lives we lived inside it.

Scratches on the door jamb,
each one a celebration
of legs stretching longer.

The dent in the wall
where the sofa refused to turn the corner
still smiles at us,
a stubborn reminder
the furniture remembers too.

Nail holes pockmark the plaster
where photographs once clung.
Faded squares linger,
where smiling toddlers
in floppy hats once watched us.

We leave behind the marks
of having endured.

The house will heal.
Paint will cover.
New laughter will fill these rooms.
But these scars are ours.

We walk away knowing
a home is never just bricks.
It is every wound we made,
and every wound we mended,
inside its walls.

Mike O’Brien @zoomburst.substack.com · 3w ago

#PoemsAbout #ExitWounds

I’m in hospital again! Not as badly off as the guy in the poem. Raised heartbeat. Hoping they don’t keep me in.

Merril D. Smith @merrildsmith.bsky.social · 3w ago

Good morning! For #PoemsAbout #ExitWounds I'll be happy when I feel like I don't have to write poems like this anymore. Thank you to @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk

Poem:
Exit Wounds
(In memory of Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero killed by ICE in Biddeford, Maine.)

The start of the week,
the start of the day

under our observing star,
waves crashed on coastal rocks

salting the air with ancient minerals
carried like dreams
inhaled with morning coffee,

how he could have,
how he would have—

a thousand ifs waylaid

loud pops
like Fourth of July firecrackers
a witness said,

they marked
a white KIA
a city

a three-year-old girl in her Bluey pajamas
a wife made widow too young,

more holes in the fabric of a nation,

how we could have,
how we should have.

Jane Dougherty @janedougherty47.bsky.social · 3w ago

A kind of #ExitWounds that I'm familiar with. For #PoemsAbout @thebrokenspine.co.uk

Avery Lark ✨@thebisylarke.bsky.social · 4w ago

my entry for #PoemsAbout #PowerCut @thebrokenspine.co.uk loved this prompt, looking forward to reading everyone’s takes on it later!

Sandy Serenade

One October, in a
hurricane
wasteland
during the year
of apocalypse
I walked down
the hell-hill
to where the river
rose up to meet me
and decided to change
my sorry little life, to take
my power back. The sleepy
shore town dithered with the
hum of backup generators like
mechanical cicadas hanging on to
summer’s last branch. I strummed my
heart out on the guitar at dusk in our
candlelit kitchen. Ill-advised adventurers
kayaked through downtown streets. A nurse
doggy-paddled across a floodwater channel
to her ER shift. Lost teens like us wandered the
waterlogged streets as power lines dreamed, strung
up from pole to wooden pole, high on the sound of
humans existing outside of our brimming temporal
bubbles, long overdue hibernation for a crumbling
world.
When the town’s grid came alive again,
I know those wires wept.

Dawn McLachlan @deemclachlan.bsky.social · 4w ago

A #fridaypoem for the #poemsabout prompt #powercut Thank you @thebrokenspine.co.uk as always. Remember to check the hashtag - read, like, share the love. #alttext #PoemAltText #PoetryCommunity #poetsofbluesky #poetry #poems

Power, cut
By Dawn Mclachlan

There were raised hands and voices
Before she fell like wind-blown lines
Into the evening blue
And all the world forever changed
With such rapid power loss
She lay in fearful stillness
Gathering dampness in her bones
Later, when all was white
And clinical brilliance
They asked “did you see stars?”
The words would not come but
In silence she remembered
The torn jasmine
Casting scented constellations
Across the summer lawn
And nodded

Bernard Pearson @bernp.bsky.social · 4w ago

huge thanks to @thebrokenspine.co.uk for once again hosting #PoemsAbout #PowerCuts heres my wee contribution look forward to seeing the work of everyone else

Anomaly
The ghost priest that had been
ordered by Prospero
Arrived as lights failed.
Due to the collapsing sun .
While the girl who sang
Like a honeyed bell,
levered herself into some kind of dress.
As a silver snake sneaking
back into Its still warm skin,
Just as something went
bump in the day.
Telling you that particular lesson was over,
and someone would be along later.
to collect the bodies and your homework.
Sleep now, for when you awaken.
The dreams will come again,
seeping like magma
Through the cracks and seams in your façade,
Like tunes from someone else’s
Half erased, musical score.
© Bernard Pearson

John Chmura @johnchmura.bsky.social · 4w ago

#PoemsAbout #PowerCut @thebrokenspine.co.uk Will put a reading in the comments.

BYPASS

kissing goodbye at the service
elevator
as the doors collapse
her heart
powered down
for repairs

a book
brought to kill time
used as a coaster
nervous chatter
silenced by a code blue alert
as camaraderie dissolves
are cohorts psychic adversaries

visiting the intubated mummy
I don’t recognize
my wife
whisper wake up
over the chirping
monitor bank

protests of love
opioid fever drip dream
I honestly wish
it was a truth serum confession

Stefano Carini @cieloceano.bsky.social · 4w ago

For #PoemsAbout: when there’s a #PowerCut, I write a terza rima and speak to the Night. #poetry #prompt #writesky #blueskypoets #writers

I asked the night

I asked the night to borrow her name,
to carry her might on my body of sand.
She told me to find a darkness to tame,

return to her at dawn, extending my hand.
I fought demons roaming the depths of my soul,
yet after that war, I was left with no land.

The stones around me became burning coal,
my skin turned water, with sea became one.
Myself I could not find, in labyrinth I’ll fall,

where one day I’ll fight the fiend of the sun.
I asked the night to borrow her waves,
but I was no more—her name I’ll become.

She whispered her name in shimmering waves.

Paul Cannon @pvcannon.bsky.social · 4w ago

For #PoemsAbout #Powercut with much thanks to @alanparrywriter.co.uk and @thebrokenspine.co.uk

A free verse poem which speaks about a powercut as a breach in a relationship and how restoration occurs simply.

Jane Dougherty @janedougherty47.bsky.social · 4w ago

Wrote this yesterday in what I thought was a moment of lucidity. Not so sure now, but I'm not going to manage anything better today. Inspired by events, Bonnie, Binface and Belgium. #PoemsAbout #PowerCut @thebrokenspine.co.uk

Paul Brookes @thewombwellrainbow.bsky.social · 4w ago

For #PoemsAbout #PowerCut @thebrokenspine.co.uk

Candlelit Seventies Without

a thought switch flicked,
and if glass globe works light
and I recall candlelit Seventies
evening in Winter's discontent.

How important during that Winter
electric light, few hours TV,
the extra jumpers and ignorant
thrill of days extraordinary nights

Those nights I recalled stood
underground in Eighties, caplight off
a darkness lively with ghosts
as imagination lit by stories.

Paul Brookes

Living in a world of opinionaires 🇱🇷@swagnificent.bsky.social · 4w ago

My European friend send me this picture last night after our brutal loss 😂😂😂😂