Jeanne Iris is driving the bus

Birthday Girl, Jeanne Iris, is driving TFE's poetry bus this week - she gave us a great selection of options for prompts - which you'll find over here along with this week's passengers....

I chose to write about my favourite sensory memory of Summer... It involves pizza, which is funny, as I wrote a piece about my mother's homemade pizza which was included in this month's Senior Times thanks to Eileen Casey, who commissioned the piece a few years ago for her Tastes of Home project - memories and recipes, which was a lovely idea.

Anyway - this is one about another type of pizza, and I suppose just goes to show that pizza is inspiration on a whole load of levels

Somewhere in New York State

A pool was thick with children soaked and splashing
drinking chlorinated dilute stew
emerging for another layer of a fruity oil
or greasy cream
and sitting neath umbrellas that wouldn't save from rain
submerged again once skin has lost its wet in
the hot air, and icecream's dried on soft bleached cheeks

We tried a slice of real pizza
thinner than toast - the warm elastic
flowing cheese, umami in tomatoes
there hasn't been another to compare
to that slice of wonder
unmatched down the centuries