Content Warning: death
Keren Dibbens-Wyatt – Two Poems & Artwork
Mourning Prayer
beneath the house creaking
in unexpected January sun
comes the pull of the sea
ever downwards
on my slick-silked sleeking
cormorant corpse
into the depths he says will
make me
untroubled waters
filled with kelpish longing
waving in the dance of crenelated thought
edges bubbled with tiny eyeballs
caught before the instant
when they must float and sing unheard
never to break the surface
or burst here in ignorant bliss.
the black feathers all drift
to the floor.
Downpour
your honeyed pearls
fall relentlessly
soft-hard on the panes
cushioned cracking
on a glass heart
that thought itself
flatly unyielding
silver in gold
the wrong setting
sheep in Argonian fleece
your wolfish wiles
swallowed hole
still stuck
in crone’s craw
have me howling
to the pocked pearl
to the light that will see me
and pay the price
when
I ought to be dancing