L`ORCAN BLACK

Lockdown

Look
how quiet it is here–
how tight the night bites you.

These small mouths–
how teeth their sharp, small

movements at dawn/sleepless
flour-fingers rolling white dough
& milk churning over & over–

how we care to make a thing beautiful
enough to bear.

How for days & days
there is a new cupcake/a cake/
something with folds/a softness–

anything sweet folded in on itself
like a baby, like a sweetness of faces/
families over a fence.

Spring months march heavy­–
Summer/Winter
& weight, like long–still water,
like glass clouded over

& every morning
in the morning paper:
death in the news.

Dawn birds crying/
some strange choir,

like a host of swallows–
              Burning/
              but flying over–

Witch’s Means

                   –After the execution of Giles Corey.
Salem, Massachusetts. 1692.

Say I was a Swallowtail,
Apatura Iris or Inachis Io–
or any live specimen– because really,
what does it matter?
& you a scientist with your pins–
instead of inquisitor with your boulders–
cold metal points struck through
like pikes to the board beneath
as you stroke & stroke my pinned wings,
bands glittering in black, in gold,
in my fine–dusted ochre.

Pain is no object
& once pinned
you whisper to me of my own frail beauty–
how despite the pain & the pinning–
you love me, really & how the Lord will set me free.
Even now, even like this:

pain–blind, froth-mouthed, seizing–
there is no stopping this.
How you love me more, pinned down:
how you love me still.

Inside, lamps are lit
white–bright.
At the windows moths gather,
wings shush glass unknowing
their small night–shadows brush
these beautiful brutalities.
Mullioned eyes seeing
only lightness, wonder,
white–glittered flame–
flinging themselves sick
& ecstatic as saints.

There is no getting up from this.

So let us pretend I am wingless & sightless.
So: if I am wingless & sightless,
it means: I become nothing more & nothing less.
Which means: I become nothing & everything.

Witch’s means: I become all the night’s dark spaces
& set myself to fly out
in a hush of wing-brushed night

& take my leave of that small voice,
wingless & sightless
gasping out:

‘More weight, more weight!’

Lorcán Black is an Irish writer, living in London. His poetry is forthcoming or has previously been published in Poet Lore, Snapdragon, The Northern New England Review, The Connecticut River Review, The Los Angeles Review, Assaracus, Apogee & The Stinging Fly, amongst numerous others. He is a Best of the Net & Pushcart Prize nominee & his fiction has been long listed for The Two Sylvias prize. His first collection, RITUALS, was published by April Gloaming Publishing in 2019.