THE APOCRYPHA OF NORTHERN CUL-DE-SACS
Two Poems - Emily Oldfield
Hanging Royd
Cast clothes
become a cairn of kept desire
in stone-heavy fustian, lashed with sweat
and the hollowed mammals of each shoe
watch the channel of the bed.
The night is female animal
a flex of fingers at cold panes
from hands that once tightened
cords of wool and pushed back passions
in a weight.
She comes in writhing from the mill
the repeat of holding down and lashing up
that conjecture of the thread
which casts her cries
through leaves of oak.
It is the window she hurls herself against
above the topography
of two bodies, pressed. And the candle stutters
in its mill-light plunge
as I give her to you in a breath.
Branch
Walsden, 02/01/2021
You have not known me in this landscape
the mud of my mouth
beginning as bark. I have
found my feet in a new surface
the sunlight curtained
at the reach of an arm.
Here Dean, Clough, Royd
seeded deep in the chest
the rough of local tongue
in this wood-panelled throat
grow to the timbre
of midnight rain
where I sow
the shape of the wind
through my clothes.
Feel me in a breath
its leaf-stain of cold
becomes still life
for this hardened stare.
Meltwater moves down a spine
like the season’s arrow
let me show you this altitude
moor-matter
the ram’s den cut
from my hair.
My verticality unimportant
and fire forms the suture
but these roots web wires
to the unlit match
unseen hands tend
in the past and future.
Rival fingers on the axe.
