Magic Woman
We stand in the middle of the woodpile,
flames spitting, licking our ankles, burned at the pyre for laughing
too loud, for running naked in the woods, for cackling and scheming
and spending nights in the forest crouched down bleeding into moss,
unconcerned as the animals watch, deers and hares and the moonlight
glare, and the crunch of leaves as we dance internally to the
goatskin drum of our fathers – distant and absent and here's their
support, the rhythm of a heartbeat, a long flowing river of genes, an
inheritance etched on bones and traced invisible on skin.
We command ourselves, we spell us into
being.
We are connected to the underground
network of roots and we sing in the morning, listening to birds, and
the echo of wolves leftover from the deep dark night and carrying
with it, a resonance, metallic and clanging, and thick in the air so
that owls dart around it mid-flight, an airborne circuit, swooshing
and gliding -
my grandmother, one of my many
mothers, said to me in our tent as the fire glowed inside, she said,
'Never expect anything, just know or don't know', and I understand
now that she was referring to a sense of presence, a here-ness in the
body, my stomach knows, my whole body alive and beating with all the
knowledge needed to know -
I am an ancient remedy and a
modern tonic
- I
admire bubbles as they pop up on the edges of lakes, and tadpoles and
reeds, and those unknown depths where tragic heroines are left
lamenting, where ghosts live and swords go to die, the death and the
wonder of deep deep water.
A sneeze may
wake me from my dream but I will still be in the fire, it is where I
burn eternally, and all these lives are mere projections, spells I
cast to distract me from the pain.
I am a magic
woman and I have a thousand more lives to conjure and lead until I am
ash.
____________________
I Make Myself Clear
Banana peel held in a half-open palm
the birds alight and
wasps in their pristine costumes,
glossy yellow, petrol black
they would be skinny and cold if they
were human.
We sit together at the watch-tower
up the steep stone steps
in warm shadow
the sun not yet come.
Yes I was chosen
Yes there is space
I wonder, were we all meant to meet in
this way?
I forget,
I was not born in a pond
there was a jet-stream at my birth.
We all take up space
and this is my open enclosure
this is the invisible parameter
between fiction and truth.
We are ghosts reborn
skeletons on loan
funerals at home.
Creation beats us bloody
tears off our skin
so we feel the day's every detail.
Begin with an image
begin at the mountain-top
on hollow ground
the tree-bark snaps.
____________________
Referendum
Grapes hang beside cobwebs and
lightbulbs
Dying sun shines peach against mutating
clouds
The town sleeps, in the wake of sirens.
____________________
Communal Living
Rat-a-tat groaning of a waking house
the clang and chink of dishes
footsteps, bare skin on tiles
creaking stairs,
thin plasterboard.
Outside
the garden fluctuates and blooms.
Elderly crows recall bluebells in June.
Bugs in their circus flights.
We look through cardboard telescopes
only to see grooves of a palm
skin soft, colour mute and reddish,
glowing with trapped light.
Though these minutes are empty
people switch positions -
chess pieces unsupervised,
in flux.
____________________
Coasting
Toes planted in wet sand, how the waves
crash so softly in the drizzly grey morning, all of us expected to
chime in with wholesome-hearted wonder, the serene faces of nature
lovers. But I do not feel these things, I feel a deep, sad rawness. I
thank God, the creator (how hard it must be, all those blank
reluctant pages, prescribing hang-ups, personalities, DNA
malfunctions, addiction, delight) I thank God for the transparency of
skin, how it soaks its surroundings, how I glow so alive, so alive,
so alive, like the rock pools, the crags, the dainty formations of
sand. How the sea spray plays with the sun ray. How we stand at the
precipice, our faint stories floating above us like lost children.
Walking in a quick stride, we are the process.
I am a body
and I am not linear.
____________________
Sunbathing
The chink of ice against glass,
with open faces
bodies tread past.
Someone wheels a barrow
then carries it.
The way your lips feel against my
finger:
that's how October feels in summer.
The way cigarettes smell on your
jumper:
I would say stain
if it wasn't so fragrant.
Spirit Animal
The
leopard sleeps in a smoking cauldron at the foot of my bed. My toes
curl up with his thick breath, condensation and meaty vapours drip
down between them, the smell reaches me, musty and primal, and I
wonder if he is just a cub now what will he grow into? He doesn’t
even know his full strength, he has yet to notice himself bulk up in
the mirror, to check his weight or practise his growl alone with the
window closed. He just is,
and is fierce with it too. I did not birth him but he is a part of me
that grew too literal and large and had no other option but to
escape. His claws tighten around my big toe. He licks the edges of my
nail and it tickles. I think of sandpaper and fetishes. So many
animals in this house already, yet more buzzing outside the window.
____________________
When
I dream I let them float and disappear in the morning. There is a
certain grown-up wisdom in that, a Buddhist calm that receives and
lets go. Perhaps we really do travel every night, is that why I’m
so exhausted every morning, jet-lagged with time difference.
Vulnerable and open to all the interpretative power of the dream
world, filled with shadows and symbols, and seconds that mean days.
Skylights welcome me when I wake and most days they are blue and
wispy-white. The farmer’s engine growls, gates clang, dogs call
each other hoarse, and the silent twitter of birds line each moment
with the faintest of shimmers. Like a fish gliding with its whole
body, let us swim confidently and surely towards a new day.
