on temptation

by | Issue #2, Issues

it’s not the willow pattern plate
behind cold museum glass

it’s not your brother’s birthday cake
white frosted on the pantry shelf

it’s the diaphragm
pulling in smoke from the ruined hall

it’s the hand
clasped round metal five hundred volts hot

it’s the skull’s
connection with the steering wheel

thrown long before we knew where it would stop






Katy Naylor is an office worker, a teacher and a mom of two. She lives on the south coast of England, and makes games and writes poems in the time that falls between the cracks.