geese overhead cheering you on

by Line Ford

lay betrayal like a carpet from Konya

on ice-age ground

cover this ombrotrophic dome

repeat the admittance of loss

look up from this shallow dish

from a place, like you, that should not exist

where trees crawl out of sand

after six thousand years

the critic’s spears have fallen short

so do not place long markers

they did not spend teens

sharpening weapons below ground

look, their own wool caught

upon the heel, as they walk

unspooling all they thought real

the mist and the missing

let three people drop off 

like petals, ready, like the rock tail 

of a fallen star returning to the sun

their faces receding to grains 

you are myth

and they are history

lies are just thistledown

blown onto estuary, eaten by salt sea

trailed along the Leri, laughed in a song

from a locked place

sun rises as expected

hauling the flat flag of time

I’m yours, it says

fire up the fire.

Line Ford is a poet, writer & maker of visual poetry from Barmouth, Wales. She works part-time running Kurdish linguistic rights projects. Line publishes a ‘zine for street-sleepers in Bristol called @now_you_zine_it Her translations of Turkish and Kurdish poetry have been published by Palewell Press, Smokestack Books and Parthian. Bluesky, Instagram, Website (she/her)

Image credit: Hilma af Klint (Swedish, 1862-1944) Group I, No. 7, Primordial Chaos (1906-1907) Artvee.com