Sigyn Kills Time
read by kirsty irving
So get out of this one, Wizard.
Never ones to do things by halves,
they’ve pretty much stitched you
as tight as can be. As tight
as your lips that time, thick crisscrossed twine
scribbling out your speech, dots of red
where the needle dove pitilessly
into your face. Thank me
for my unpicker. For not saying
“I told you so”. If you find yourself
in a grateful state of mind, thank me also
for running here to this rock
where stringy parts of our son bind you.
Thank me for selecting the biggest bowl
in the larder to hold like an umbrella
between the serpent’s drips and your face.
If not for staying,
thank me for my choice of crockery, the extra inch
of rim granting fewer dashes to empty its contents
onto balding patches where nothing will grow,
returning to find you splashed, eyes fizzing, screeching
a hundred names, rarely mine.
© Chris Hutson
Splitting the Ego with Mary
read by kirsty irving
Among my mother's pansies,
down the ribbony path, squirrelled
behind the privet,
she slipped down her underwear.
Like a cat, watching
the pointing finger
instead of its subject,
I examined the polka-dots
measling the cotton
until she hoisted her hem,
lay in the grass
and tented her legs.
It was a baby mammal, curled and new
with a paintbrush-tuft of hair.
It sprang and gave at my stumpy touch,
teasing that it would swallow me
up to the elbow.
For months I stared at the hive
of block-colour planes on my walls,
charting with those same stumps
the differences between us.
Flu-hot, rhythmic.
The door, the shriek. Later,
the kitchen knife, long as my femur.
The threat that cut short
my hands' sub-blanket expedition
in favour of daisy chains, cutlery,
scout knots. Oh Mary,
come back for the summer.
The string stings, I spill my food,
I stretch in disturbing ways, I tear
apart each furry stem,
but the mise en scene of your pinkness
does not distort.
Mary, I'm older now. Show me again.
Kirsten Irving edits FuseLit magazine. Her poetry has been published in Mimesis, Toad In Mud, Aesthetica, Magma and the Argotist Online among others. She is currently working on her first novel and two collections and likes otters.
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