Poetry Postcard Fest Follow Up Post 22

The Poetry Postcard Fest is a challenge which encourages poets to write an unedited poem on a postcard and send it to a stranger. Organised by the Cascadia Poetics Lab, who organise the participants into lists of 31 + yourself for you to address your offerings to. This was my first year and hearing about it just in time to register, I was on List 15. The lists are sent out in early July and you have until the end of August to send out your missives – to date I have received 23 of 31 possibles and now that we are into September, it is allowable to share the cards and poems you sent and the cards but not the poems you received. I will share these in the order of sending and I will miss out those which I have not yet received in case they arrive soon…
Although the original poem is to be sent as written – crossings out, blots and all, I have typed them out for people who can’t read my writing and I am allowing myself to edit if I feel like it…
Before I post the last poem I sent but whose sender was the first I received – the next eight cards, two at a time, are ones on the list that I sent but didn’t receive from, – given what happened to the 23rd to arrive by way of Trinidad – I have not given up hope – so if you recognise a card you received and you know you sent one – please let me know in the comments and we shall presume it travelling still, the backwaters of the postal system…

Dear Albert
I wish to report a crime!
On a recent visit to Blackheath,
London, I came across this
Jane Doe – provisionally
identified as Barbie.
The naked body dumped on a wall
evidence of torture with
a cigarette lighter
to the breasts – otherwise
no obvious sign of fatal injury
no witnesses, no motive.
Who would abandon
such a doll?
Who can fathom
the workings
of the human heart…

© Andrew Wilson, 2023

Dear Mario

In Washington State great trees abound
but Olive trees are not, I think there found
these are the flowers of the Cretan Olive
grown more for oil than eating
olives now are threatened by global warming.
Pray for the farmer’s harvest
when next year comes around
I am guessing from your
name that your family
is no stranger to olives…

© Andrew Wilson, 2023