Damocles
Drink me down
and dry, Damocles.
Now we rise
too late to greet the dawn.
If we could hear the noise
from our star
it would pound, jackhammer-dull,
burr-burr-burr; if
the sun blinked-out, we would count
down thirteen minutes
(twelve,
eleven)
until darkness gulped us.
The sound would outlast the last thing you ever saw.
(eight,
seven)
(Can you imagine
absence of vision/presence of sound,
crumbled intimacy in the darkness—
smashed by raised voices.
Tolling intonations. Tolling.
Like the afterlife in
Mesopotamia. Where
everyone was thirst-dry and naked
where everything was dust and wind.
Like overground, no difference;
they didn't believe dying would noticeably improve
or worsen your quality of life)
I spilled my soul today.
I cowped it.
In that lack of light,
no one would see what fragments
I lost, tore off, or gifted.
No hindsight forming new designs
on how I should have lived my life.
If a statue does not pour, it is not a gargoyle—
it is a grotesque.
at the trident
Squeeze in through
freckled doorways;
the would between the worlds.
Bow-arm straight,
legs curled clockwise.
Ye mighty have bent the knee,
bereft of years. Rust fingers drowned by sand.
If my outer shell is already dead
then vast extinctions slough off
in Cambrian showers. Every scratch
a blazing comet trail.
What you admire is
deceased. I am no better.
I burn and rise anew each moment; aligning
in micromovements, my glorious trajectory
through the sun.
Fire. Fire. Hold.
Where body meets breath we
are already corpses. That’s what I read in the lines
and furrows of your knees. Maybe that’s why I breath
easiest inside your cupped palms;
chilly little fins
snaking through the sea.
Lindz McLeod lives in Edinburgh, Scotland. Her short stories have been published by the Scotsman newspaper, the Scottish Book Trust, 365 Tomorrows, Twisted Aardvark Flash Fiction anthologies and more, with work forthcoming in 42 Stories and Cabinet of Heed. She has published poetry with Wingless Dreamer, Passaic/Völuspá, Prometheus Dreaming, Meat For Tea: the Valley Review, For Women Who Roar, Ink Sweat & Tears, and Indie Blu(e)'s Smitten anthology, with work forthcoming in Coffin Bell, Sunbeam Anthologies, Allegory Ridge, and Heirlock Magazine. She was shortlisted for the Fish Publishing Poetry Prize in 2019. She is the competition secretary of the Edinburgh Writer’s Club and holds a Masters in Creative Writing. www.lindzmcleod.co.uk
Twitter @lindzmcleod