Neat and Tidy

16. prompt: a stacking poem

The High School reunion invitation
behind the friend's offer to find her work
is overlaid with Brea Can's newsletter 
for women needing distraction and ease
while dealing with female cancers. On top
of that there is the Western Highway
Cutting Realignment Project
Community Open Day notice for which
she and her sister have registered interest.

Create it! says the newsletter from a
consultant in making albums that become
art, but art is ignored as her eyes rest
on the credit card statement and rates notice
whose corner is pinned with a leisure centre
offer of a free muscle-challenging session.

"By December" is the handwritten memo
on the printed email from publishers
of an anthology she'd love to have poems
in and over that the Poetry Walks in Melbourne
Map matches her desire to create real stories about
real places. But there: right over the directions
she has pinned a list of Bright Ideas without
substance, half-obscured by the aforesaid
rates notice. Also hiding, the appointment
cards and contacts she was once so
enthusiastic about, will one day someday follow up.

Beneath all, the corkboard as blank as any canvas.