Scattered

 

Here noses the warm beast

of riverstone into the envelope

of my folded hand. There the socket

she knocked from, the gap in the cairn

of a rocky family, the heavy tongue

of the water—pronouncing loss

loss loss all the way down to the sea.

At some point the dragged neck-weight

you were crumbled grey and was breathed out

and in along this gulping throat and no room left

in the caving mouth for any other word.

I weigh my choice stood tall, feathers of sun

through wattle’s rattle and the heart

of stone on the palm’s scale. To sink a gift

or pocket it: how each means letting go. Hard old

beast, my hand is opening: the wind shouts ash.

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Originally published in Black Bough Poetry’s ‘Duet of Ghosts’ edition

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Hathor crafts a wishing cup

 

Surely of her welling dawn-milk sculpted;

soft brackets of her hands bid liquid solid,

pray forth curves mooned smooth as horns

of the cattle mother—praise-she-who-browses

in petalled stars. Your names unfurl to flower,

holy garland draped about the pearl equator.

Here you lipped the immortal brim of yourself,

offering ritual traces sheening into stone. Secret

the lotus clenches, sinks into the sleeping Nile—

surfaces at lights-drip, resurrected into bowl.

 

Originally published in Black Bough Poetry’s ‘Tutankhamun: Wonderful Things’ edition

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To fire the cold wick of the world

 

Lotus-floated twice—everliving torch

of a child. Ra melts his gold in the river

of your name, reeds flare at your touch-

paper. Sun-letter, each age stacks tinder

and yearn, parched for a split of gods

or their caskets. We sift the airless dark

at the bottom of the hourglass, rarely find

a spark beneath endless sand. Four syllables

of cantrip, rebirth of breath into the hands:

alive or dead, ignite a lamp that longs to burn.

 

Originally published in Black Bough Poetry’s ‘Tutankhamun: Wonderful Things’ edition

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By Turns

 

Horn-crowned shadow creeps the hearth; the world tree

cracks its bucket. Old branch, new roots – the wheel creaks, a scrape

of stars is hatching in the rut. We move. How we are moved.

 

Originally published in Black Bough Poetry’s ‘Christmas and Winter Volume 2’ edition

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317a, 317b: meri-Maat

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Behind the papyrus of their eyelids

the neverborn sisters sail. The desert’s body thickens

a second womb, the barque slits the black vein

that feeds the dead. An ooze of mudded gold, a rupture

in the swaddling shroud. Deliver these mosaics

of bone and leather into the gleaming pan

of the scale. A feather rattles its gavel barbs,

a sound crouches at the thief-gate, watches us.

The field of reeds shivers, hissing ready

its thousand midwife stems.

 

Originally published in Black Bough Poetry’s ‘Tutankhamun: Wonderful Things’ edition

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The neocortex has a lot to answer for

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Sun halfway through her dizzy life—

only yesterday the great hoot

expanded to cradle a notion

waxed so giant. By treadle and by jaw

each bone box creaks awake, echoing

with terror at its own capacity.

And through canopy’s dapple, the sun just nods

and continues to palm-and-drop the same soft,

bright leaves. Ah, look up.

This for you, baffled little ape. And this.

Mobile light, entranced pupil, once beneath this

we were branch-sway. Once she was the only watchfire

we had, once her estranged mother-dark rocked us kindly

and we nested dumb and unalone and ripe stars fell

freely into our unworded mouths

and we thought nothing—

not one thing of it.

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Originally published in Black Bough Poetry’s ‘Afterfeather’ edition