I can never find a pen when you come, when you
snap me up on your lizard tongue and
wrap yourself around me as if I were a spool.
Vague as metaphors you tease
trawling your shadows as feathering clouds do,
shedding infant vowels in your vaporous image.
You will never be perfected, and while you are
half born I will never sleep.

In pickling ink I preserve all your fruits;
Perhaps you are a prophecy, a
mouthing of the boundless, or some
God or other Minerva festering
like secrets in empty lines.
Years gone now, labouring to drain the
reddest blood from your throat,
and I am none the wiser.

Leanne O’Sullivan
Gorth, Eyeries, Beara, Co. Cork, Ireland