‘Almond Blossom’ by Peter J Donnelly

Your favourite work of art, you say,
but not whether you’ve done the jigsaw. 
It isn’t mentioned in your personal history, 
which is not, you stressed, a memoir. 

Maybe when you’ve written that it will be.
I’m not sure what you’d say about 
the picture, other than that Van Gogh 
was joyful with his use of colour. 

It’s hard to imagine it a work in progress
photographed by your husband, 
with the blue bits arranged on sheets 
of paper, the white bits in one tin, 

the green ones in another, for what 
would that achieve? Perhaps like me 
you’d have pairs of pieces dotted
between the edges like marks on a mirror. 

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Meet the Poet!

Peter J Donnelly lives in York where he works as a hospital secretary. He has a degree in English Literature and a MA in Creative Writing from the University of Wales Lampeter. His poetry has been published in various magazines and anthologies including Obsessed with Pipework,  Black Nore Review,  High Window,  Ink Sweat and Tears, The Poet’s Republic and he is soon to feature in Atrium. He won second prize in the Ripon Poetry Festival competition in 2021 and was a joint runner up in the Buzzwords open poetry competition in 2022. His first chapbook ‘The Second of August ‘ has recently been published by Alien Buddha Press.