The World Eats Love

By Carol Edwards

In her debut collection, Carol Edwards interlaces a narrative of characters bearing up under the weight of longing, loss, and regret. She unfolds, with reassuring tenderness, a spectrum of experiences: from stolen innocence to wasted time; from insidious monsters to bittersweet loneliness; from the heaviness of broken hearts to the hope of belonging.

She concludes with a short story—a fairy tale, of sorts—to capture in prose themes woven throughout the poems.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ravens Quoth Press
• Release date: Apr 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215615003

Book preview

The World Eats Love

Copyright © 2023 Carol Edwards

First published in Australia in April2023 by The Ravens Quoth Press

A picture containing dark, cave, night sky Description automatically generated

All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this production may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher and copyright owner.

ISBN:

ISBN:

Cover design by Dawn Burdett

Formatting by Kara Hawkers

Editing by Kara Hawkers and E. Mery Blake

for the luminous Lisa Walsh, poetic kindred spirit

and

for Ashlee Shepherd, sweet friend too soon gone.

Contents

Peeling a Tangelo

Undead

Our Hungers

Tattoo

Hurled Wishes

Last. Words

Sacrifice

Old Sweatshirt

Daydreams

Instructions to Break Your Own Heart

What Remains:

Haunted

Spectrum in Blues

From moonstone crushed

Carousel Horse

Depth

Autumn Ruins

Last. Time

Reunion

Trains

In Memory

Forgotten Dreams

Grow Up

Groomed

Mountain

Her Version Isn’t You

Darkened Stage

Bird of Prey

When the Monster Under Your Bed Has Become Your Friend

To My Sweet Flower

Petals

The Love Vine

History

Did it Hurt When You Fell?

Something Sweet

My Love

Last. Step

Things Are Louder When It’s Cold

The Fall

Avalanche

Normalize

Last. Breath

I’m the Lungs Now

Apparition

Forbidden

Shallow Grave

Deep Water

Shell Lining

Midnight Oasis

Waiting

Moths

Snowbound

Windows

Star-Song

Whisper-Steps of the Really-Real

Across Dark Waters

Found

The Lonely Shoes: A Short Story

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Publisher

Peeling a Tangelo

How strange a thing it is

to stop short in the kitchen

mid-peel over the trash

and marvel at the translucence

of a tangelo slice

sunlight plumped inside

a thin skin so easily burst,

shadow of the pit

a bit forward in its demand

to be granted analogy.

Perhaps it is the second or third

meaning in a poem,

mysterious and indistinct

but clearly visible

when one holds the verses

up to the light like a color slide,

though application of force

to squeeze it out mars form and feeling

and makes a gushy mess.

Maybe let the seed be

and eat it with the rest—it may

gestate inside a while

become nothing, just break down

and expel, or perhaps it will stick around,

settle into your cells,

which is what it intended anyway.

Undead

dreams…

hopes…

home…

these words resurge a lot—

my hands return empty

grasping for different ones—

their ghosts cling