Silk Robe Spectres

I have been wearing the dead like hessian,
coarse rough cloths, my skin has been prickling with them.

I have been dressed in the dead as if a tight army uniform
buttoned up to the neck, constraining.

I have been wearing my lost like borel, burlap
like sisal fibre, their furze grazing my skin to a burn.

I have been dressed in the dead, like khaki
dunn colours camouflaging me so you cannot see me
in the earth.

He tells me to wear my spectres like silk robes
the garb born of the Bombay Mori
of silver fish, lacewings, spiders,

To gown up in cocoons of larvae
wear my gone, my lost loves,

so I shimmer, refract light.

He tells me to wear my ghosts like silk robes
to dress in the materials made by mayflies
that shimmer and dazzle and celebrate their brief day.

He tells me to luxuriate and gleam
in a gown that glints in the dark of night
then, like life, so easily and slickly slips off.

The Air is a Chorus of Entreaties

Come here, come here, come here.

The beach is a prairie
and soughing grasses sing of the hidden children that play.

The ponds are ink dropped with tadpoles,
necklaced with long gleaming strings of eggs.

The rivulets are skinny younger brothers of the calm sky
with the same azure skin.

I am huddled in the dunes, reading the lines of an American poet.
The absence of his father echoes like wind in a tunnel.

People walk past constantly with dogs
The walkers cling onto leads as if to their parent’s hands.

I have you with me father, in the pause between thoughts,
in the solitude before another person walks in,
the blank space before I make these marks on the page.

The Air is a Chorus of Entreaties
Come here, come here, come here.

‘Father, you have taught me that quiet can be a kind of poem’ – Devin Gael Kelly.

I am Feeding a Bird Called Love

I have read somewhere that it eats berries
so I scatter glistening bright orbs on the stone slab
of my window sill

they are like beads from a broken necklace
silk buttons torn from a vintage dress
the sun catches them and they blaze brilliant, as if glazed ceramic
but it doesn’t descend.

At night I dream of
the beautiful night-sky wing
coming so close I can stroke
the silken nap of the airborne.

I later learn
that the tease of my sweet morsels
won’t satisfy it

that it prefers bodies flattened by collisions,
live flaying creatures
on their way down.

How bloodied is the lure
required to bring
Love down from the sky.

Forget the rosebud-red offerings
the pale breads.

Erotic Heaven wants the hot mess
the dripping bait.

Put out skin split from collisions
unspooling red ribbons,

the heart bulging and bruised to a pulp
like berries crushed under foot for Love to guzzle as wine.

Anna Saunders @AnnaSaund1  is the author of Communion, (Wild Conversations Press), Struck, (Pindrop Press) Kissing the She Bear, (Wild Conversations Press), Burne Jones and the Fox ( Indigo Dreams) and the forthcoming Ghosting for Beginners ( Indigo Dreams, Spring 2018).  Poems published in journals and anthologies include: Ambit, The North, New Walk Magazine, Amaryllis, Iota, Caduceus, Envoi, Eyeflash, and The Museum of Light. Anna is the CEO and founder of Cheltenham Poetry Festival https://twitter.com/Cheltpoetfest. Festival tweets: @Cheltpoetfest

Robynne Limoges (Three Images including Banner Image) is a Guest Artist for the July “Secrets and Lies” issue of Burning House Press curated by Icefloe Press IcefloeP . More of her work, exhibition and publication information can be found on her website: www.RobynneLimoges and on Twitter at: @LimogesRobynne.