atlantys

Prologue: mother’s lullaby

that night, the bombs

scythed the muscle

of the sky and

recklessly bled

him dry. sanguine,

i watched it sluice

like a crushed fruit

into the wooden vessel

of the earth, nestled

tenderly between

the cupped

hands of the sea.

i curled my own hands

around my belly,

my nucleus, the radiant

centre of my universe,

and gazed at the great

wound that hovered

above our tiny isle.

the amber moon hung

in anticipation. i

thought my daughter

would stir, but

she was waiting

too. i tried to think

of what to say

to her, but it felt like

talking to the moon,

silenced by its faceless,

golden gleam. that

night shimmered with

the melancholy of a

dream, caught halfway

between sleep and life.

i felt her shift

tentatively with the

seeping unease of a

blood drop flowering

in water, wispy, yellow

and cloud like. my

daughter was already

part ocean, part memory.

but in that final flash

of lucidity i saw her,

this child of my veins,

watched those bloodshot

vessels carry her away to

a city carved

from the inside of

a star.

The island

at night the sky was

a beautiful blood red.

beneath it, the

thick blackness

of the sea with its

oily iridescent sheen

rolled and seethed.

we hauled fish

packed like bodies

brought them back

our city, built from e-waste,

the corpses of screens.

but tonight the air

smelt rancid, stank

of acid. it was the

rainy season. i could

count the seasons

from the pock marks

on my skin. four years ago

it rained like armageddon

and the island crumpled,

caved in like an

empty eye socket

like a man without a soul;

the acid whittled down

our island to the

ragged gleam of bone

but we sucked on its marrow.

made love in the hollows

of the island’s cheekbones

saw ourselves as the blade

and the island as our

whetstone, blinded ourselves

with our own luminosity,

felt the pulse of our lives

as quick and bright as

mercury, as the jagged

light that beats

behind an eyelid.

but under the burn

of rain the island’s flesh

corroded. the metal became

a living liquid membrane

that dripped in

loose and languid

rivulets round the island’s

blistered lips. cowering

in the deep groan

of island’s distended

jawbone as the hot metal

freely flowed and the black

waves heaved like bile,

i watched our island

dissipate into silver

flakes like fish scales,

fine and fickle

and fragile. we thought

we drank from life,

but our lives were

one long exhale.

The man

we could have

gone on dying forever

if it wasn’t for

the body. as the

weather turned, i went

one night to look

for clams and

found the empty,

salt-licked shell

of a man.

that yellowed night

was strangely soft, like

the tender curve

of an animal’s spine.

as he slowly blinked

i realised for the first time

under that wide and deep

and mellow sky

the quiet miracle of

what we had merely

called survival.

his arrival blew in

a hot and hazy climate

of denial. they gathered

round him like gulls

and spoke with holy

stained-glass tongues.

they spat words

like fish bones,

crunched the shards

between their teeth,

let each vicious piece

pierce sunburned lips

with violent apathy.

this stranger was

no responsibility of ours,

they said, yet

here he was,

sharp and unwelcome

as a crack on a lip.

as the accusations

swelled and soaked

his frail flesh

with the scent of

immanent death, dull

and acrid as petrol

i felt the sickening tilt

of vertigo, felt the

spinning coils of

time refract through

glassy sightless eyes,

felt pasts and futures left

unsung urgently throbbing

against my tongue,

against a bruised

and blackening sky,

heard clocks screaming

as their faces melted,

felt the second-hand

beating as the sins

of the children unfolded.

Interlude: a grammar lesson

what do you call a pack of lions?

a pride.

what do you call a pack of witches?

a coven.

what do you call a pile of bodies?

a condemnation.

what do you call a man beaten

to death with a vacuum cleaner pipe?

Blood vessels

after the guilty flock

dispersed i covered

his body like a half-eaten

piece of meat after a party

swept up the delicate

shrapnel of his skull,

scooped the viscous

remains of his eyes

back into their sockets

with the wet plop of a frog

returning to a swamp.

every night after that

i dreamed of the

strange tremble

of gelatine

in the palm

of my hand.

three days later

we saw an arrow.

a single bone protruding,

long and slender, from

the dark water. as

the ship approached

it stretched further

and further into the sky,

pointing up in judgement

towards its god, like

a sword plunged up

into the body of

a gladiator.

it took a good week

for that arrow to

become a bow.

the ship’s body was

the archer, the straining

muscle of her curved

back pulled tight,

quivering with tension,

drawn by her glistening

sternum towards our shore.

when she finally landed there

a gang plank reached

out tremulously,

like a prayer,

and sank deep into

the island’s crown.

and although we

were now a

damned nation, i can

still see her deep bow

in supplication:

the grace of a ship

brought to its knees.

Interlude: revenge, a dish best served cold

a traditional recipe, passed down from generation to generation to generation to generation to generation to generation to generation to generation.

first, separate the men from the women and children. then butcher them.

second, kill the old ones. they’re no use: they’re all gristle.

third, keep the women. we need laying hens.

finally, take the children. at this age, they’re still tender, but they’ll toughen up quickly, and soon they won’t remember a thing.

chef’s note: oh, the sound. ignore it. it’s a natural reaction, one that happens as soon as they hit the hot water: the sound they make when the air leaves their bodies.

Some thoughts about love in the middle of disaster

in that small ship’s cabin

he owned three things:

two books, and me.

i became an atlas

of my own violation,

caught in the

cacophony of my ragged

fish-net body, frayed

and fraught with fear

beneath his brutalist

cartography.

i became a map soaked by

a spray of salt water,

the paper left swollen

and tender. when paper

dries it remains misshapen,

sunken and mellowed

with a seeping sadness

foreign to its once-bright pages.

bold brush strokes

washed out to soft shadows,

the great plain of paper

they once strode upon

withered into brittle,

shifting, sand dunes.

those runes became ruins:

stains formed new edges,

remapped my borders

with frightening apathy …

but now, as i write, i wonder

whether i am just

exploiting my own tragedy,

mining it for a kind of

tormented beauty, like

the broken, slapstick dance

of a half-wrecked man.

i wonder whether love

is just a competition over

who can be the most vulnerable;

whether our words are just

the stolen memories

of another generation;

whether poetry is just a

never-ending protestation

of my own innocence;

whether wisdom,

like gold, is just a ledger

of the costs wrought

upon my molten body;

whether I will ever be more

than the sum of my loss.

Interlude: echo

hot blooded man

he told me

he couldn’t

stand to

see me cry.

now i realise

that what he

couldn’t bear to see

was his face

reflected in

my eyes.

The calm

thinking back on

those long days at sea,

i would wonder

if i internalised

his violence, as though

violence was a

lonely traveller

and i offered him

a place to rest,

hung his coat on

my clavicle,

let him slumber

in the hollow

of my chest, rocked

him to sleep with

every shallow breath.

was it he or I

trapped, broken-

hearted, behind

the bars of my ribcage?

neither, I suspect:

for the longer I

was there I

lost all sense

of my own interior.

in its despair the

tendrils of my

body bloomed

into an entire

ecosystem of violence,

a canopy of cruelty,

a web of open wounds.

i drank down his

malice, felt it

trickle and pool

in the chalice of

my hips; let it

languish in the

place where my

tongue used to sit;

it had atrophied

into velvet, pale

satin and silence.

all i had left

and my pity,

dark and heady,

brewing within me,

thick with the

scent of an oncoming

storm. so i mourned

behind veiled eyes;

swallowed my sorrow,

balmed my body with

lies, let the dregs of

my soul congeal

did whatever it

took to survive.

Interlude: sisyphus

of course i’m a woman.

you think they’d break

a man’s back for this

useless rock that

rolls with the sun?

its underbelly all

caked with mud?

atlas? he shrugged

a long time ago

but you know what?

that’s not how i roll.

me? I won’t stop.

I will fucking roll this rock.

I will roll this fucking rock.

The storm

it was easy, in the

end, to slit his pale

throat in the dead of

the night, the blade

dancing like the white

of his eyes when

he rolled them back

in his private ecstasy.

he had grown careless,

carefree, for i’d been

so accommodating i

had become mere

upholstery; he was

no longer scared of

catching himself on one

of my sharp edges.

he was distracted, too,

by the storm clouds

thickening on the horizon.

they all were, that night.

a bad omen, they

muttered, for colonists

and pirates are

nothing if not

superstitious. yesterday

the sea felt like

it was holding its

breath; and now, with

a great and violent

exhale it turned into a

wild beast that

thrashed and

churned and screamed,

bucking against this

tiny pathetic little burr

stuck to its back.

i could hear grown men

wailing as they were

battered between its

sides. the blood that

poured from my

captor’s throat

mimicked the

saline spray of

the crashing tides.

i closed my eyes,

and with the ship’s

next violent list i

made my escape,

slipping deep into the

ocean’s embrace.

Atlantys

at first, i thought

i was dying, my body

twisting and floating

through an endless

abyss. i felt the

blood and water

swirling, salty

and ferrous,

around my face

and through

my veins.

slowly, gently, i

realised that i

was not alone.

i saw their eyes

first, delicate and

luminous, almost

orchidaceous.

their eyes seemed

to flower in the darkness.

i know that i

should have

been frightened

but i was drawn

to their faces. it

may sound strange

but it seemed

less like a meeting

than a memory. they

swam closer, and

began to speak.

welcome home, child

they said, arms

outstretched, blue skin

glowing in the oceanic

light. scarlet coral

bloomed between

their lips and fingertips.

their smooth, bare

scalps gleamed.

i joined them,

restored to my

rightful place

among them, a messy

constellation of sea

witches and monsters

and goddesses whose

lives had become braided

together through the

ceaseless myths of

their weakness,

their bitterness, their

cruelty, their immortality,

their slippery lies.

they surrounded

me in an endless circle,

a protective golden amulet

as the waters around me

continued to rise.

they taught me

so many things that

night, as i lay coiled

in their arms, grateful

to be alive. i laughed

and i screamed and

i wept with them,

knowing what a miracle

it was to survive.

Epilogue: the goddess

that night, the bombs

once again rained

down from the sky

like an ugly cluster

of insects, dark and

cockroach like.

like my mother

i stared upwards,

unfazed as they

crawled by, jagged

and monstrous

against the cavernous

light of the moon.

my crescent

body had expanded,

now round and whole

to accommodate

you. as it did i thought

my mother cradling me

before this apocalypse;

her eyes like mine

had traced

the nuclear stars

that cleaved their way

across the sky

like a blade

through flesh, leaving

in their wake these

deep glowing wounds.

i said a prayer

for her, my mother,

whose body

was calcified, slowly

eaten alive, dried

down to a brittle

shell, poisoned by

the nuclear fallout

that fell over

our electronic isle.

but this time, i would

survive; her fate

would not be

mine. against the

sickening explosions

of light i felt my womb

quicken, tighten with

anticipation. and then

from that blood red

abyss came the cry

of a deity: a goddess

named atlantys.