Stir
Stone walls do not a prison make…
- Richard Lovelace d. 1658
I sense your weight in the gym.
I push you up and pull you in.
In the pew at chapel
you stretch and flutter my lapel.
Sometimes I work the library
and feel your patient breath
at each turn of page.
I feel you flicker at lights out.
I catch your blush at wake-up,
your tut tut as dinners clear,
your giggle among the role-call,
your hug all the way
on the supervised walk;
we’ve outgrown small talk.
I don’t exist to win parole
nor do I yearn for visitors.
I learn no shallow trade.
I’m not a base head or binger;
the bag man wonders
whose bhang I’m on;
I’m not blocked; I’m mad on you.
Fobs and padlocks are your curves,
rattle of keys in corridor
the music of your jewels;
window bars are where we drink
a slow cocktail or two
before making hay in full glare -
naked, playful, wanton stars.
Philip Burton
Moonlit
As if there was a wolf inside you;
or in your mind’s eye, a jangle of stars
far above a desert where a woman
is raking sand off a wolf’s bones,
as if the tooth of the moon pressed
too cold and singing over the grave
was all that was needed,
or that a single flute of lily or jasmine
growing like a bolt of lightning by her foot
was enough to show power
and resilience. As if in her travels
across coastal trails and dark timbered
forests or villages slung along blue
-grey mountains or the scented crests
of waves she hadn’t discovered others
who were moonstruck, lit, or otherwise dusted
with totem of wolf. Hadn’t recognised the same
shine in her own eyes whenever her hands dipped
into a salty mirror or in the midnight vigil
of crows flying forever overhead.
Lisa Megraw
The Dragonfly
The dragonfly is called
a horse possessed by a devil,
it is also adder-bolt, nymph,
a troll's darning needle.
The dragonfly is falcon and harvestman
for it's said to hawk and glean for prey.
A boat and a tree also possess it:
the four wings row in the air
and the wings veined into pentagons, squares
are like the leaves of the willow
floating over this river –
leaves shaped like flames, leaves
like a party of rowing boats
painted in blue and green, lifting
in warm currents like dragonflies.
Isabel Galleymore
Stone walls do not a prison make…
- Richard Lovelace d. 1658
I sense your weight in the gym.
I push you up and pull you in.
In the pew at chapel
you stretch and flutter my lapel.
Sometimes I work the library
and feel your patient breath
at each turn of page.
I feel you flicker at lights out.
I catch your blush at wake-up,
your tut tut as dinners clear,
your giggle among the role-call,
your hug all the way
on the supervised walk;
we’ve outgrown small talk.
I don’t exist to win parole
nor do I yearn for visitors.
I learn no shallow trade.
I’m not a base head or binger;
the bag man wonders
whose bhang I’m on;
I’m not blocked; I’m mad on you.
Fobs and padlocks are your curves,
rattle of keys in corridor
the music of your jewels;
window bars are where we drink
a slow cocktail or two
before making hay in full glare -
naked, playful, wanton stars.
Philip Burton
Moonlit
As if there was a wolf inside you;
or in your mind’s eye, a jangle of stars
far above a desert where a woman
is raking sand off a wolf’s bones,
as if the tooth of the moon pressed
too cold and singing over the grave
was all that was needed,
or that a single flute of lily or jasmine
growing like a bolt of lightning by her foot
was enough to show power
and resilience. As if in her travels
across coastal trails and dark timbered
forests or villages slung along blue
-grey mountains or the scented crests
of waves she hadn’t discovered others
who were moonstruck, lit, or otherwise dusted
with totem of wolf. Hadn’t recognised the same
shine in her own eyes whenever her hands dipped
into a salty mirror or in the midnight vigil
of crows flying forever overhead.
Lisa Megraw
The Dragonfly
The dragonfly is called
a horse possessed by a devil,
it is also adder-bolt, nymph,
a troll's darning needle.
The dragonfly is falcon and harvestman
for it's said to hawk and glean for prey.
A boat and a tree also possess it:
the four wings row in the air
and the wings veined into pentagons, squares
are like the leaves of the willow
floating over this river –
leaves shaped like flames, leaves
like a party of rowing boats
painted in blue and green, lifting
in warm currents like dragonflies.
Isabel Galleymore