Swifts and Nightjars.,Swifts and Nightjars Elizabeth,
the doves come and I scatter
my guilt likegrain for them.
I am having visions again.
They appear in wild processions
from the mouth of my father's crumbling poetry
into my mothers arena of pain.
they are propaganda for sin.
My throat is full of wishbones and brail.
I watched you drown robins in whisky
and I have built a glass bottomed boat.
It will be my arc (my coffin, my arc)
until my secrets turn to milk in my mouth.
The shadows are still so bloated.
I have tried to make ghosts bleed.
Now winter has come and the spiders are
spitting on graves. Finding grace is like
catching hummingbirds with bare hands.
He says that he has changed,
and I have become a chrysalis of vultures,
a pillar of salt. Elizabeth your eyes look different,
they are still in your face like sleeping scarab beetles.
Is this my punishment? Have I not loved enough?
There is a child in my arms and a fox in my heart.
Ermine Strill, Edinburgh,
Ermine Strill, Edinburgh,
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