it’s been a while since i have put any of my poetry forward to be published anywhere other than on this blog – a preoccupation with real life coupled with artistic self-doubt [and a dash of ineptitude when it comes to consistent online marketing] has meant that i’ve been a bit ‘shy’ in sending out my work for publication.
however, this week i thought, ‘right. enough mucking about. time to get my stuff out into the wider world!’
and…my artemis suite has just been published in fabulous online arts publication yareah magazine.
thank you especially to writer and editor isabel del rio, and also to poet melissa fry beasley [who followed this blog, i followed hers and it was in one of her posts that i first heard about yareah magazine].
the sky sighs above
the val d’orcia
braids its assumptions
with a band of meltwater
together and glossy
they wander down
a very old street
gossip about the heavy-lidded
mountain at their back
chat with the armoured ghosts
paled by the day’s hour
flirt with sun
tickle fronds
they part at dusk
kiss goodnight
the rounding
shoulders of old men stones
caught offguard
midstream
long unchaste
two children afoot
i know
the arrow in your tongue
the terse blush
when eyes
brush naked throat
and lower
to where
the huntress breathes still
fly free, words
with seizure
take shame
fire!
creep, leap
cravasse floors
where her arrows
dwell blind
and the hounds
he mastered an hour ago
nose the scent, cry
joydeath!
even now:
the yodelling hunt
the snap of tendon
the brusque resistance before
belly-tear and tumble
even now the man’s mind
housed in the stag
boy-grins gladness
now, and now
even now
branded to his white-walled eyes
the shadow seams of vigour
in the cream belief of her back
waist-deep
in water he would have breathed
and when she turned
hawking shots
and the skyblur
and the sundrum
and oh, oh, that golden clavicle!
autumn-eyed
she pronounced his fate
pelt-swathed
licked and sealed
sundered
done
they say
in surprise
she spelled him
into the stag
eviscerated
by his well-slept hounds
but
slowglowing
premeditated
she kept gods waiting
dangled his fate
in the river
from her toe
decided on
outrage
he first came upon her at the river
on a day he tracked alone, snaring songbirds
for supper, his hounds at rest
upstream
in willowshade
the applause of water
drowned out his sigh for the pout
of shoulder and buttock
the goldygold longbow of her back
all smooth and planed as the boulder
her perch that graced midstream
moated
he staunched the swell of greeting at his molars
that neck
the plastered locks
the smears of rivermud
midthigh
he read her
quiet
quiet
like the trails he followed
~
it wasn’t a shadow
for the sun washed her face
it wasn’t a scent
the jasmine was heady
hung, ready
this time of day
nor was it a sound, as such
for the bees wobbled
pollendrunk, thrumming air
perhaps a taste? a slight salt?
she felt him there nonetheless
not all at once – she might have stiffened
and interrupted whatever it was
the gods were playing at this season
she did not turn
she let herself sink onto the intrusion
the way she did any other boar or stoat or fox
breathed and breathed
and waited for the stag to leave
