The Body Broken
Mass and Sunday mourning pass the chancel black
and chalice-back of I, spire-spined and last to part
my plumping bud to take the nocturne wine. Mine
the softly hills, mine the spill and steeple-swing
of fruiting breasts and bells, yes. We break the bread
and bless. Lady in the lancet holds the apple mocking red.
Dappled chant and dark, ahead the blood-bright night
and first-light glass of gasping Eve, winter’s heave
hangs always here with heads that bow before the vow
to never grieve the leaving eyes of youth. Truth
is lost and winterworn. Borne away on snarling winds,
the greening drop of spring falls from my hair. The cleric’s
cloak is a darkly thing. My deeper, deeper throat
receives the gloaming sermon there, heir of the berry
dreamt to burst in his hand. Damn the vestal
up-and-swung of lust that Woman loved, budblood
and the Garden singing skin and pink bouquets, but
turn the tongue beyond the Book and in the darkest
places hold the harvest fruit and look above and long
to lasting-touch the apple that is loathed so much.
Such is Sunday mass and curse of we, the curled
Madonnas kneeling with a screaming in our skirts.
The weakly bread we break and nurse. And vow and
kneel and slaughter one more godless book of verse.
Jarrow Doll
These penitent nights, chapel-black
where the terrace turns its back to the hills,
after the wild white fists and the fight,
the blood-bite-kiss and the mist of the morning
over the dock, in the glowering grey
like a sentinel fox I slip in the dawn on
and beyond the wharfside-wetland-headland
away. Behind, my wound-tight sweat-damp
night and a lover whose name I never quite
know. Oh dockland dim and fog on the moor,
the wind at the water-bridge stops
at my corner-whore feet as I turn from that
frostshard street and home, a lone
lamp dim in the last laugh of night.
My Tyne-light mirrors me Madonna gone shy:
I who split spines of hills with my stride,
the mariner’s wife who watched from the shore
that ship ten years too lost. Now, the frost
of my widowhood workhouse-dark, my skull
holding eyes like cradles carved
with a terminal hand, and then when
the river moves the moon through the land
and I hold something crèche in my canyon
again, to rinse off the men from my skin
I remember. Before the bairns get in, I am
a heavy, bleeding gender. Your medal tender
glows on from the hearth, man of my heart,
seaman my own. Know only this: though
the field sheds its coat to the wind your infants
are clothed in the sweet sweet spring of youth,
a matriarch lighthouse guiding them home.
From Caitlin
After you, my lighthouse hope, who made a bonfire of my eyes,
the city streets grew old, and I like a lamp candled pale in the cold
coal night, who saw your spotlight glow and fail
here in the crag-black winter of Wales; I who brought to your door
the Irish moors, and London’s charm, and the wheeling, laughing
shorebirds of Laugharne, and made town bars our drama’s stage,
and aged a decade when you played away with local girls
and corner whores; I whose garden full of fruit, folding infants
in our bed, bled hot tears at two a.m. when morning
didn’t bring you home again; I, with the red slits of my eyes,
who saw in evening’s cups of light your hunchbacked-bent-bowed
head, a celestial star, when your words rolled far across miles,
and your eyes in the windowlight took the crack from my smile,
like a movie played in a firefly night; and I, once the lover
whose name you carved into stone, find the winter’s old cold
teeth now blunt in those first frost flakes of November, the annual
month I remember your bones, still gold, in that American bed.
Dead ten years. And still I doubt when, within those great Welsh wells and walls
they ring your passing bell, Dylan, did I ever really know you at all?
Laura Potts is twenty-two years old and lives in West Yorkshire, England. Twice-named a Foyle Young Poet of the Year and Lieder Poet at The University of Leeds, her work has appeared in Ezra Pound’s Agenda, Poetry Salzburg Review and The Interpreter’s House. Having worked at The Dylan Thomas Birthplace in Swansea, Laura was last year shortlisted in The Oxford Brookes International Poetry Prize and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She also became one of The Poetry Business’ New Poets and a BBC New Voice for 2017. Laura’s first BBC radio drama Sweet The Mourning Dew aired at Christmas, and she received a commendation from The Poetry Society in 2018.
March 10, 2018 at 7:25 am
This is great.
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March 10, 2018 at 7:28 am
A amazing Poet. I liked her work.
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March 10, 2018 at 7:29 am
Reblogged this on johncoyote and commented:
Please read and enjoy the work of a talented writer.
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March 10, 2018 at 10:11 am
Fantastic work!
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March 12, 2018 at 7:57 am
These are wonderful. Brilliant stuff 🙂
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March 19, 2018 at 9:14 am
Stunning poetry Laura.
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January 8, 2019 at 9:36 pm
Reblogged this on The Wombwell Rainbow and commented:
Exceptional
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