Sunday 20 October: Chloe Green

“Blooms-bury”

From: Monster Flowers

we gather around tables –
schoolchildren with safety scissors,
faeries set to a flower feast –
and shape crepe,

pulp hearts of conifers
(reduced by a dimension,
then returned)
a simulacrum of their natural peers.

a mother,
palm to paper,
traces in outline the hands that raised
her daughter opposite

fingers, flowers, faces –
the hardest shapes to draw.

—

umbrella inverts in the wind
and the blossom curls and shies,
as if shielding her oxeye
against the mist.

—

From: Harmonic Dimensions

rain-light enters the church
through green stained glass
and we lie on our backs,
wide-mouthed fish at pond’s bottom.

I glance sideways at the sunken pietà,
fold like a child.

incense lingers on the air
and we encircle one another in ripples,
barefoot strangers joining voices
before splintering off into blue night.

said aloud,
“chant”
might be taken for
“chance” –
both reverberate
below the vault of sky.

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