EPISTLE

after Niall Campbell

Understand this is handwritten: scrawled 

on paper rubbed with ochre, red 

as a chough's sly eye; sent, wrapped 

in vine leaves and taped to the back 

of a snail’s spun shell; or, rolled tight, 

tied to the leg of a homing pigeon – 

one who knows where to place the scroll 

to have you stumble upon it when 

you wake, staggering, fresh from a dream – 

the page dribbled with drawings and laced 

with half-solved mysteries and twisted myth. 

I am writing this for I find myself recalling

your oblong house, its ivy a-sprawl 

of tangled limbs nudging every window, 

notebooks swollen with intricate maps 

of sea floors, elaborate etchings of ants; 

your tortoise plodding around the back garden  

munching on dandelion leaves or grubs. I come 

to realise our bodies cannot always follow 

our floating thoughts; that this life may kiss us 

goodbye before together we eat artichokes again, 

drifting on a boat that takes us to the star-lit dance – 

you singing folk songs all the watery way. I 

want to tell you, I still hum that tune. Only now 

I smell jasmine flowering in spring rain, feel 

ancient wind telling the silver eye when to fly, 

watch mycelium break the soil only to soak 

in pale light, hear the forlorn bird’s unceasing song.

(Shortlisted for the Montreal International Poetry Prize 2022)

First Published in the Montreal International Poetry Prize 2022 Anthology

Winding her

by Allis Hamilton

“Cornfields breathed in the darkness”
    – Norman MacCaig

From the minute Clementine turns
into the adjacent field, a-bob with its swollen thistles
and rose-pink poppies standing tall among panting,
caramel grass, the wind taunts her.

It caresses her whisky cheeks, sets her russet hair
a-tangle with its long invisible claws; snoops
in the contents of her basket, flicking
through pages of her diary, cooling the scones
she had so carefully wrapped in sky-blue cloth.

It slides along her bare thighs, lifting
the ruffles of her pale peach skirt.
With not-so-gentle nudges it shoves her,
impatiently, along the ant-worn track
by the sluggish green creek.

When she comes to the crest of the hill
it turns against her, forcing her
to lean into it – her brown eyes blown dry.

Her feet anchor her to the hill
as far below a witness takes it
she is preparing to fly.

All Clementine can do is wait
until the wind grows limp and then
she tumbles down the hill, her scones
a-jumble in the velvety red dust.

First Published in The Poetry Review, summer issue, 2017.