The House on Red Brick Road |
by Lana Bella

Down the curving lane where the red brick road bends,
stands a blue cottage upon a hillock's end
the morning sun roams about its thatch roof dry
sloping down the eaves-stacked water reeds' lines,
creeping breeze skirts the honeysuckle vines
parching the veil of dew upon the nectar blooms.


A mother calls her wayward son from the graveled step
her throaty peal darts over the yawning gate, through
the shadowed oak then ripples above the gurgling well
as it loops back round the echoing house;
the sound that'd wandered out is drained nearly empty as it climbs the
sodden deck--
the rattling tail snakes by the garish light lurking near
the pine wood swinging door, and steals beneath the tiny slit in dregs
of crumbling thrill;
out from the sunny vale and into a faint lilac-scented air
of the oblong-shaped entrance hall where a hung kerosene lantern
gently tossed its amber flames upon a smutty stucco wall,
the slithering drone creeps by the slimy coat of wet floor,
edges to the foot of the baby's crib through the adjacent nursery
clambers up the oak spindle, looked over the slat-free side
then caresses a pair of chubby white arms stirring from below
the oodles of cooing noises and spit bubbles.


___
Lana Bella has a diverse work of poetry and flash fiction published and forthcoming with Anak Sastra, Atlas Poetica, Bareback Magazine, Bewildering Stories, Beyond Imagination, Buck-Off Magazine, Calliope Magazine, Cecile's Writers' Magazine, Dead Snakes Poetry, Deltona Howl, Earl of Plaid Lit, Eunoia Review, Eye On Life Magazine, Family Travel Haiku, First Literary Review-East, Five Willows Literary Review, Foliate Oak Literary, Garbanzo Literary Journal, Global Poetry, Ken*Again, Kind Of A Hurricane Press, Literary Orphans, Marco Polo Arts Literary, Mothers Always Write, Nature Writing, New Plains Review, Poetry Pacific, Snapping Twigs, Spank The Carp, The Camel Saloon, The Bangalore Review, The Bleeding Lion, The Commonline Journal, The Criterion Journal, The Higgs Weldon, The Screech Owl, The Voices Project, Thought Notebook Undertow Tanka Review, Wordpool Press, Beyond The Sea Anthology, War Anthology: We Go On, Wilderness House Literary Review, Featured Artist with Quail Bell Magazine. She resides on some distant isle with her novelist husband and two frolicsome imps.