Brigid Goddess of Fire
I am the wink in the heart of the flamethe dazzling lurch of candle’s loom.
I twist and seethe to embrace your whole.
Stoked by breeze, I leave your shadow
defined in ash.
I am the leap of the spark of the flame
counting threads in carnation red.
I fringe drapes, paint wall and door
alchemise the everyday. Heat and light
are my largesse.
I am the rage at the core of the fire
continent-wide, cumulus-smoked.
My power spreads like artery blood,
igniting tree, brick and bone.
Here I am.
Lesley Curwen reads: Brigid Goddess of Fire
Rulers of the Sea
Rust mottled, barnacle sprigged, blue-whale-longthe beast slides overhead, oil-iris in its wake.
She raps the intruder’s skin to clang. Her court hangs
still, scales twitching to keep station. No echo
rings, no air-voiced cry. Until a hole appears
unleashing shoals of lifeless pungent waste.
We fly beyond the beast, past rainbow wrack
peacock’s tail, eelgrass, fields of sugar kelp
away through rolling slate-green gulfs of salt
sparse herring-herd, drift of crystalline shrimp
to coral turrets whose blush has sunk to grey.
A fastness no longer fast, a stronghold scarred
by sun and dreck. Here, deathless nets unfold
in ocean draught to mock Salacia’s hair-lace
spun from yellow weed, beryl-starred.
Our thrashing caudal fins suck alien filth
from ocean bed. Smashed plates and skulls
dance jigs in bitter-deep, sink to fitful rest.
Salacia aches for sleep in pearl-flecked throne
waits alone through spinning suns and moons
chews nacreous fingers, whimpers for her lord.
Summons a search to Pacific’s monstrous eye
the roiling crux of a thousand vortices.
We courtiers surface to see our trident-king
splayed, enmeshed in weave of flexible dross
a gyre of infinite size, and he the dying star
at galaxy’s rotten core. Godhead torn down
his realm entumoured, populace robbed
of what was pristine ours, a million
million hearts beating in water-worlds
unled, unheard, waiting for new venoms
to bite home, for fatal bleach of blues
wet suffocation and abiding emptiness.
As Neptune writhes, at horizon’s tail
the beast sails past, its green-dyed hull
cracked by sun’s unflagging gaze.
Lesley Curwen reads: “Rulers of the Sea“
Lesley Curwen is a poet, broadcaster and sailor who lives in Plymouth UK. She often writes about loss in the natural world, and hopes her poetry brain can convey the damage done by global capitalism that she observes as a business reporter. Her work Recovery Attempt is joint winner of Hedgehog Press’s First Collection Competition. She was Highly Commended in the Poetry Wales Award, and Nine Pens Press published Invisible Continents, a collaborative pamphlet from Lesley, Jane R Rogers and Tahmina Maula. Twitter: @ElCurwen.
Art: various forms of camouflage, a vispo by Robert Frede Kenter (c) 2023. Robert is a finalist in the DaVinci Awards for design (2023), a widely published writer and visual artist, EIC/Publisher of Ice Floe Press & curator of the Cassandra/Chorale project. Twitter: @frede_kenter. IG: r.f.k.vispocityshuffle.
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