Issue 12: Beth Davyson
Suckled Lace
Top button undone, then sleeping
a chance for the creature
if it is that
blue flickering exhausted entity
It’d fit on the bone between your breasts
*
Never milkier, that sky
yet it remains up there
no space for anything but itself
bearing it
*
Ah yes, the loss of touch and with it the adhesive sense
furniture as cobweb
the clock in an arbitrary mood
elderly animals perhaps able to provide company
*
Pale green. The surgery you pass me through.
Childhood nightmare
glass corridor bound to disappear
slap of a skipping rope then the handles
as I fall
*
The option strangely palpable. Sitting one leg in
arm around your knee you reflecting
on the swans
I’ve made a mirror position
Odd in a way I’ve never done this
*
Night before its time and wondrous
as suckled lace between the fingers
film of banana over teeth
My goodness- a listener
slow hands on wooden animals
corroded with tears then offered up involuntarily
crouched, she lifts each one, dries it
her apron is gingham
*
For recovery,
a garden we all care about.
One of the roses
*
For someone else
keep that small glow
she’s reading so far gone
my camp mattress is a patio
not a kempt one but one she likes to see
*
Replaced, they are scathed and proud and ornate
neat on the lid of their battered box
*
Barbeque ash. I know
cracked shells of red shield bugs
hot sun, our lettuces flourishing
kitchen bench
then the reach he made
less than a second but no counting
*
Its not real strength, theirs
we sleep well in the same house
shining brass pan lids in a round stone pantry
vast iron range
through slitted windows
wave of boxwood trees once a maze
in the morning there is a blessed lack of insistence
it leaves the stenching buckets lighter
lets you sit stoning some plums
*
Still often a shock that the sky
makes no noise
eyelashes, that’s all, and a pillow
the window pulls open
no need to check if your body is still there
or in which shape
*
The blanket is a parachute in another life
I don’t expect you to believe me
We shake it for cherry stones
from when you were here not just imagined
Never a jolt in those hands
and your head turned straight for the hills
*
Every sister ruffles their hair right now
Every sister glances right at you
*
Take it my love take it
though yes you’re thinking of slipping
train to track not yet aware
of your invalid ticket
Recall for now just one person
who knew when not to speak
Or the smell of old bark in what used to be
an orchard, child’s stage for the birds
*
Could be. I recall
scuffing at the floor and complaining
late spring and coming on thirty
the faint swinging breeze
making just the right space for each word
*
Its possible that once the colours reseparated again
I knew them better
though only nights so still as to disturb the bats
would show me this
that or a large well tended fire with a silent tender
*
For god’s sake don’t remind us of stone floors
a full moon rose on a better night
more simply, when music made it easier
friends tucked their hair behind their ears
believed some story then saw it fit to dance
*
Nothing gained by the death march.
Nor such language.
Beneath it is a gingham apron unironed
barefeet you’ll never get the green off
*
The air is too threadbare to hold me
so I remain on furniture
the front door is long off
no woolly grass to hide in here
all fellow sleepers made up
Beth Davyson has always written things down but learnt more about what was going on during a Masters course in Sheffield, in 2011. She has published in Moth magazine, and the anthology A City Imagined, published by the Poetry Society. She has been working in Frankfurt for an agency translating creative work from German to English.
