Poetry

Terrae (For another)

Her fingers spread across
the back of her head. Her knuckles are flat to the bonnet and
elbows at fourty-five degrees to where bonnet meets head.
The trajectory of her thighs in sunlight. The aurora of her
sunglasses reflected in a windscreen. The solar flare of her
cigarettes. Her gravity. The eclipse of her body fusing with
automobile. The black hole of the mouth; tongue against the
dark matter of the palate. The silhouette of her arm reaching
incrementally to the sky. The sky. The word. The word. She
looks to isolate what makes it sky and not a jug or glue,
unpicks stars and planets from its fabric. Still she has not seen
the sky. She is weary of rooms — the city's growing pains.
Nothing happens in rooms or cities. She holds a grape
between thumb and finger. It is larger than Venus. The
evidence of our being, she said, will be covered over. There is
romance in that.

Joshua Lingard