Alison Michell (           – 2013)

Alison started writing seriously after cancer diagnosis in 2002. Her poetry was published in various magazines/anthologies and in two collections: her first, Journeywoman, following her MA (Creative Writing) at Goldsmiths; her second, Look Well to This Day, in December 2012.

Cross my Palm

Mine are plain hands made to cook
and sew and garden, never comfortable
with manicures. I hold the warm bulb
of your four year old fist like a promise
safe in the curve of my glove
as we wait by the gate to the park.
 
I’d like to be around when cartilage
hardens to bone, to see you grow knuckles
with a broader span than mine,
which cannot stretch an octave.
One joint nurses a crooked ache –
still able to forecast thunder.
 
You boast to your friends
about my magic finger,
not knowing there is another story
of a fortune teller who ran her thumb
across my palm, refusing to take my silver
when she felt the life line stop short.

Alison Michell

Publications:
Look Well to This Day, 2012, Bookmark Publications, ISBN 978-0-9560731-1-2 £6 Buy
and
Journeywoman, 2009, Bookmark Publications, ISBN 978-0-9560731-0-5 £6 Buy
Proceeds of both books go to Beating Bowel Cancer.

Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet