Poetry

Night Vision

An open moon; burr of grass.
Last reaches of the spilt day
ending, the last
quiet pitch heard
in deep woods. Wet sod of dirt.
Scent of the sun’s fire
passing field ruts and furrows,
seedlings, coiled roots, hedgerows;
flight of night-bird
turning tail into a sea breeze
beak battened to the north.

*

Cloud - now stone in ocean in undertow –
drops from night above the city
into an unseen sea,
at edges of membrane and sinew.
Wade through sky. Perforate.
Pebbles of rain on pitted tarmac
clutter the way home;
night-splashed, corroded.

*

A cold touch in a bleeding house.
An open door. Sores.

And I dream you are the rising sun:

where are your bones, baby? Where are your bones?
I’ve hurt for you - for your nights.
Each turn and flat-packed mile
walked to catch the drift and knack of ends
and fugitive ends.
Back alleys of the city burn.
Night boils outside the window.
The streets smoulder as morning comes.

Published in Tears in the Fence, Spring 2006

Sky God Thunder

I have a necklace of blinking eyes around my neck.
The gleaming opulence of foulmouthed city lights
shift across these fragile surfaces like tongues.

There: high and primary,
like the only thing that ever really did exist
the moon, out for all to see -

the red of eyes,
thin lines stretched across the pupils like straw.

*

Turf wrapped overhead like a sky
of worms,  and a far door in the dark:
the ends of a star
closed tight, it shimmers
traces of light touching wood,
fat lines in thin navy muslin:
a woman door in a dress of darkness.
The tunnel is long and untouched by lies.
Its blueness is the way back into blue.

*

A striped lane walked towards the cairn,
rain holds my t shirt to my chest many-handed.
The fields wept; we were wanted.
Lightning cuts through cloud,
a flare from a ship or flashlight in the underground.

In the dry crust of the hill
a cigarette butt dropped by another tourist
glows red, burns black.

Night River

East to west, west to east,
wetness crawls

the promenade wall.
Oil and chemical, salt and tar:

the night is in my throat.

I consume distances
at the edge of the river,

three am, solitary
held only by the rain and the sky.

The wind’s touch is courageous.

The stars are stags,
antlers pointed at each new shore

sailors discover
far from here, in some sunny waters.

I open to it like a mouth

and sense her shining
full height on the horizon,

as if the horizon is a ledge
she balances upon,

and hovering I rush to her,
her starriness, her electric pulses

that beckon, she widens:

a giantess on the sea,
a woman of light and frantic white.

I immerse myself in her thighs.

Her whiteness, her size.

I am her: the sea is a boat.

We ride until the dawn.

Eleanor Rees, Alumni Poet

Eleanor Rees graduated from Sheffield in English Literature in 2001. In the same year her first collection, Feeding Fire, was published by Spout Publications. This collection won the Eric Gregory Award in 2002. She lives in Liverpool and works as a poet in the community for The Windows Project. She also teaches creative writing part-time in higher education.