Live Encounters Poetry & Writing 16th Anniversary Volume Seven
November- December 2025
A Market Place, poem Maria Castro Dominguez.
A Market Day
Sunday in the market. Time slips out of focus.
Pots and chains, rings and green vintage glasses.
I feel the anaesthesia of not sleeping for days.
He hasn’t remembered. I want it like that.
My skin like water-colour white.
Funky oysters and papas bravas
claim their space. The move has taken weeks.
Each book hand-placed onto its perfect shelf.
Your stress decibels scream
out, way above normal range.
It’s going to rain, rain people echo?
It drips-drops into my eyes.
A gutter flushing water
splashes us and drenches our feet.
Fake leather on offer,
a bargain a vendor says.
Grater bowls in several sizes, where you
grate garlic or lemon skins. I buy one.
Vermouth and tapas of too-dry tortilla.
Extra-large knickers on coat hangers.
Someone lowers a blind.
My son stuffs his cold hands into his pockets,
we stroll side by side. His grey face
worried about his wife and kittens.
He points to the sky, maybe we should leave.
The crowds push us slowly together
and suddenly we become one.
© Maria Castro Dominguez
María Castro Domínguez is the author of A Face in The Crowd, her Erbacce–press winning collection, and Ten Truths from Wonderland (Hedgehog Poetry Press), a collaboration with Matt Duggan. Winner last year of the first prize in The Plaza Poetry Prize and third prize in Brittle Star´s Poetry Competition 2018. She was highly commended in the Borderlines Poetry Competition and this year’s The Red Shed Poetry Comp. Shortlisted in Renard Press’ 2024 poetry competition ‘Building Bridges’. Her poems have appeared in many anthologies and journals such as Popshot, Live Encounters, PANK, Empty Mirror, The Lincoln Review, The Friday Poem, Orbis, Chattahoochee Review, The Cortland Review and Backlash Press.