Snow white

A small room, white walls, white lino floor. Sheets like snow. Her deep breathing. Hair the color of frost. Beads of sweat on her forehead, in the folds of her neck. She is dreaming.

crow’s call
a night unlike
any other

and her life

A small room. Unmade bed, a chair toppled over. Two plastic cups on the floor. Walls of indistinct colour. The Book of Sand open at the foot of the bed.

no one here
lives like a princess—
mushy peas for tea

as it might have been

A room 5'x5'. No curtains. Aretha Franklin’s “I say a Little Prayer” from the room next door. Birds. On the pavement outside her window, fag ends and chewing gum.

diaphanous—
lives of others in frequencies
I can hear

Stella Pierides

is a British poet of Greek descent who divides her time between Neusaess, Germany, and London, England. Currently, she serves on the Board of Directors of The Haiku Foundation (THF) and works on its Haikupedia (encyclopedia of haiku) project.

Interweaving the past with the present, Stella’s work is located at the meeting points of cultural, social, and psychological worlds, which spark the day-to-day moments of our lives. Her work has been published in numerous print and online journals and anthologies. She has co-edited and contributed to Even Paranoids Have Enemies: New Perspectives on Paranoia and Persecution (Routledge, 1998) and Beyond Madness (JKP, 2002).

Recent books include Feeding the Doves, short stories and haibun (Fruit Dove Press, 2013); and two books, In the Garden of Absence, micro-poetry and haiku (Fruit Dove Press, 2012), and Of This World, haibun (Red Moon Press, 2017), which received Haiku Society of America Merit Awards for books published in 2012 and 2017, respectively.

For more info, visit her website and blog at: https://stellapierides.com