Daria Beer, Catherine Cullen, Helen Laycock, Tapti Bose

BIRD TAPESTRY

Catherine Cullen

lit by the summer moon

two swans swim toward a mound

of mud and rushes

shy to trust, wed by longing

tending with beak and feather

the injuries of time and troubles

amid serenely cadenced threads

patches of ancient repair

like fat gold and fine silver –

traces linger

of a spindle-shaped bone shuttle

traversing the shed

burnishing the warp

to lay in the colors                                                                                                      

THE WAKING OF THE DRAGON

Helen Laycock

The yellow eye who witnessed                         

the blood sky,

the dirty breath;

the tumble of teeth

spat from the shocked ‘O’

of Teide’s mouth

as her tongue was cut,

myths from the earth’s belly

chaotically rebirthed

as towering monoliths

in the choke of bonedust;

scattered sculptures

slow-piped like unwieldy pillars of wet sand

elephant-folded,

 forever teetering;

spongy mounds of slow-stretched olivine dough

setting crystal-brittle;

observed, too, the sluggish seal,

the clog of dark tears groove her shoulder

before she slept.

From its blue watchtower,

it scopes the saucered crater still,

the frailty of its amniotic membrane;

 notes the baked knubs

of bubble-popped, bready pumice,

wind-shuffled from their mother;

spies us rummaging in her skirts,

cold flecks in the red-grey lava field.

Burns us, as we touch.

Fire loves fire.

FIRE BORN.

Tapti Bose

I was born from the fire,

of vengeance; 

my skin was the color of  

dusk, the time when the light ends

and the night begins. 

My long tresses spilled dark winds,

with blue locks like the ends of the flame.

Yet I smelt of the scent of lotus

for full two miles,

I was yojanagandha,

married to five men to

become the Sri .

My dwelling was carved of illusions.

When my husband staked me in dice,

men  tried to enslave me;

while I spoke of laws unknown to men

I couldn't be won or lost 

the eternal question,

clothed or naked,

I was still fire,

the Kritya

gathering the scent of war

the fulfillment of the prophecy

for the destruction of kshatra.

I was Krishnaa,

the dark one

not God

but woman

neither war nor peace.