Notes

¹ written in 2019
² Published in Horizon Magazine, alongside an audio reading and interview. 

Poem: Saints and Martyrs

Behind the honey-shadow of a sneeze,

On the other side of sunlit particles,

Over cracked faces, yesterday’s light lingers,

Gleaming over your little saints and martyrs.

They, unsure of their pure shapes,

Stand still with bent heads and necks.

Not furled to nothing as ferns are at dusk,

But quietly coughing up the afternoon’s dust.

They send up prayers with downcast looks,

Warnings about wainings, how you

Pressed your skin too thin into books,

Wilted yourself for nothing and

Unbraided your veins into one long tendril

Then wound it about your eyes

To cover over up all that low, sticky yellow:

Light of tobacco and flat cloud.

You look like imminent organ failure,

Eyes in body bags,

All raw and yawning for lavender.

At least by now you are well learned in weeping.

Scheduled lamentations for weeknight evenings,

Practiced prostrations, each a fresh mask of clay

To adorn your little statuettes.

Because other people are quagmires,

Made from the scent of stale smoke

And patched together with damp leaves.

But the odour of burnt coffee lingers higher,

Thinner notes through thinner air,

Like the tone of a migraine ringing.

Burnt and muddied liquid,

None spilled but stagnant –

Brown rivers never reaching the sea.