Christian Ward is a UK based writer who can be currently found in Culture Matters and Poetry and Places. Future poems will be appearing in Sein Und Werden and The Pangolin Review. 

Inheritance

The house inherited 
from my parents swarms
at night with the body
of moths maintaining it.

Lights flicker. A television
set in the front room
struggles to retune itself.
Fabric patterns reduced to fractals.

Occasionally I witness this:
Moths forming the outline
of china and cutlery on the dinner
table. The dot-to-dot of lamb

chops, peas and potatoes.
Father dressed in his Sunday best.
Mother tip to toe in finery.
The son, lost in a flurry of wing beats.

Mojave

Part of the Mojave fell out 
of my jeans while rummaging 
for petrol money. Joshua trees 
shook pom poms of white flowers 
like cheerleaders while heading 
to the concrete, blue yucca gasped. 
Burrowing owls periscoped the unfamiliar 
surroundings. A gang of bighorn sheep 
with bicycle handle horns tried to hitchhike 
but didn't get far with a lack of thumbs. 
Roadrunners imitated cartoon counterparts, 
mountain lions became housecats after 
unsuccessful hunts. Somewhere among 
this is was an abandoned base with you inside, 
sending signals to a man on the fringes 
of the desert; the blue yucca's shadow 
burning an exclamation mark on the pavement. 

Insomnia

The moon is in my bedroom
though it's two in the afternoon. 
It wants an espresso to help 
forget the sky it came from, 
to stay and watch TV, eat Mexican 
food and gossip about minor 
planets, who might win Dancing 
on Ice. The moon doesn't care 
about my eyelids pulling the 
world's monuments - the Eiffel 
Tower coming to my window 
almost puncturing one of its craters;
or that I'm starting to hallucinate 
former politicians, moths ghosting 
through the walls. It likes this place 
very much and has no intention 
of settling the bill.