Tees Valley Writers

Jo Colley

Jo Colley is a prose writer and poet who has settled in the North East. She has compensated for a rootless childhood by living in the north east of England for the last thirty years. A prose writer and poet, she has read her work and spoken word performance pieces in the north east, Liverpool, London and Finland. Her work has been published by Vane Women, Sand and Ek Zuban, and she has been translated into Finnish. In 2007, she received a Northern Promise Award from New Writing North. Her most recent poem collection is with Salt, Weeping for the Lovely Phantoms. After years of teaching in FE, she now works as a content developer and editor.

Visit her website at www.jocolley.co.uk

 

 

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The following poems are from Jo's latest collection from Salt
- these two come out of a Hitchcock obsession.

Marnie

The brisk click clack of her heels
on the sidewalk
as she walks away with the contents of the safe
cached in her calfskin case.

Her new hair glistens above the collar
of her tailored suit
dark glasses tone down
the gleam of triumph in her guarded eyes.

It’s the best moment:
getting away with it – the cash
an incidental bonus
a side effect she disperses
fast as she can.

The art of her face, a blank canvas
she remakes with layers of paint
using identikit transfers as a guide
a mistress of disguise.

A perfect life.
Horses, clothes and luggage.

If she could only ditch that mother,
lurking in the background in a cardboard house
the intermittent morse of a tapped stick
spirit rap
dragging her back.

© Jo Colley

 

Bates motel

Because it is raining and she is tired.
The weight of her secret oppresses her:
through the windscreen wipers’ blur
the colours and lights run
like mascara on a tearstained face.
She wants definition
checks into the Bates Motel
a place to reconsider.
Restructure.
Redo her make up.
Return.
But first she needs a shower.

© Jo Colley

 

 

 

 

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