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].

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

but

slowglowing
premeditated
she kept gods waiting
dangled his fate
in the river
from her toe

decided on
outrage

~

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

so. the last poem for this year’s poetry month:

camping
i’d take out my binoculars
check out the stars
be told i was a nerd
someone would drunkenly say
something about
knowing your place in the universe

i didn’t care about that

the stars are bright clusters of dots
to all but the blind
they tell stories
in braille

run your eyes over them
before they wheel away
and shuck from them
the myriad tales
hidden in plain sight

dear muse
thank you for your outpouring
at 3:33am
and the generous gift
of the sieve
with the fist-sized holes

candescence
smudged
through muslin

starts
with the taste
of chalk-dust,
ends
with the powder-shot off the blackboard
after the teacher’s
silencing ruler