Futures

The trick of the light
Shrinking into form;
Billowing out to women
Picking their apples,
Now ingrowing, finding
The reserve of the summit.
My bedsheets dance when
I am out the room
Reading books,
Always aware the reverse
Is true.
I lost my courage from hunting -
A spear replaced my spine;
The irony in being found.

Perpetual Motion

Why do I rotate and spin,
Whirling whipping up
the cavernous concrete sky.
I would
Maybe like to come down
but I’m afraid I will burn out
Dissipate into the ether,
Sand in a whirlwind,
Consuming as I am
consumed
Without boundaries
As I flounder.
Why do I not cling on
To some tangible
Border
Some steadfast rock
Like a human
Instead of paddling in
the deep end,
staring at the shore
wading like a bird.

Dry

One straight line weaving down
like a subway folding at the end
as an envelope does.
There is no construction that tries to change
its function,
the created stays unmalleable,
my face remains the same.
Yet in my crippled vision
of how the axes try to
circumnavigate the
men
with only one virtue,
I find I am a battered scrap
of uncultivated soil, covered in clay
Like stone
like steel
like you can’t break the windows here.
Bring about this distancing,
my self propelled aspirations.
I want the line to wander
on
And kill this sole transmission.
No use has come
from being clay -
I’m dried out
and no one knocks
like when my knees
Become water for fools.
The sight of the pretence
touches down cleanly on the rough land.
I am all solace and
grudges
that burn when
I breathe.

Aspirations

My one line of vision,
Carved like none
of the land,
is fighting
soil on soil
for a chance to be
unsettled.
If I were just
a bluebird’s perch
sturdy and covered
with scratches like a smile
like a heart that scorches
the arms of my clothes,
then I would be a
beauty queen
and all my teeth would tear.

Sorcery

We built extravagance
With agile hands
And straight laced affinity
For practising eligibility
To dismantle witches
And their vile bleeding
Over our necks where
The dust should settle
And the cream curdles firmly
Because we choose
To wreck eyes
naïve eyes
Jagged eyes
That can’t sleep.

by Sophie Peacock