Rumours

The street corner
collects secrets
in the red-eyed dark
She senses them behind the wink
of a dark-browed teenager who tempts her to venture
unobtrusively into the park then embraces,
in a rush her ripe bosom,

the feather-flutter
of her female heart. Eyelids like shutters
concealing their chastity, she is nervously overcome
with giggles until a Chinese whisper
of those second-hand stories, replays in her mind.


Published in Acumen.