Poets Read: Oonah V Joslin

We are pleased to offer our Poets Read series in honor of National Poetry Month 2019 and will run it throughout the month of April. 

Every day in April, our website and our YouTube channel will feature the voice of a poet whose work has appeared in our pages over the past year. On Sundays, we will offer two poets for your enjoyment. 

Today’s poem is Brooch Belonging To by Oonah V Joslin and it appeared in the Summer 2018 issue of Gyroscope Review.

Brooch Belonging To
by Oonah V Joslin


I seldom 
wear you out. I’m afraid
of losing you. 
So afraid of losing.

No pin is so secure I can be 
absolutely sure. 

It’s happened before. 
Something precious
forever lost.

It’s not the cost 
that makes a coward of me.
It’s the thought
that all through ages yet to come
a day, a week, a century from now
you will belong to someone else and

I can never 
wear you
out.

In the end it’s you who will lose me. 
You who can feel no fond memory 
or retain even the engraving of my name;
will endure beyond,
while every sorrow past or future
becomes cold-etched in me
in synapse first and then 
in bone.

About the Poet: Oonah V Joslin is poetry editor at The Linnet’s Wings. Her poetry chapbook, Three Pounds of Cells, is available on Amazon and Amazon UK.