Four Poems

by Megan Cartwright

Moirai                                                                                                            

Once upon a time I worshipped fecund flesh

ripe for feasting, freely gifting cuttings

to propagate fields flooded verdant green 

like the curve of a moss-covered breast.

No one warned of wilting, said fallen kernels

from the peach tree, white as river stones or

the bleached finger-bone that duped a crone,

sloughed smooth, would bruise bare feet.

Clotho spun skeins of alopecian silk,

lengths Lachesis stretched impossibly –

measured against the raised topography of my veins,

then wound about my ever-diminishing frame.

Skin slipped, shed upon parched mudflats, the

bindings sink, soiled and coiled, to expand in cracks

and hollow collarbones, picked over by a lone crow,

Atropos’ beak honed to sever threads.

*Originally published in Book of Matches Literary Magazine.

Apothecary

Spelled, slipping beneath the skin of sleep,

half-formed dreams bursting like a blister-pack.

The crone perches nearby, hawk-eyed witness to

my flight; a beat / an epoch.

She stops clocks –

extends seconds into sleek bolts of silk that skim senses,

chokes

the rattle-prattle of a monologue familiar as my tongue, my lips,

my throat, stuffed with her poultice of toenails and kitten-tails.

Dawn. A migraine-flash of white. Incendiary light

that burns all pretence to the ground.

The watcher nowhere to be found, traces

of ash thick in my mouth.

Seed-Keeper                         

a response to ‘Turtle Heirloom Seed Keeper’

            from Betty Laduke’s Turtle Wisdom series

I am the seed-keeper, my obsidian ovaries

forged in the pyroclastic flows of

Fernandina Island.

I am the ancient one who

carries the world upon her back,

mother of infinite regress.

I am lost and found in time,

budding anew from lava-scorched earth,

the soil ripe for harvest.

*Originally published in October Hill Magazine.

Eternity Toast

for Julia 

I queue for an age, tedium transforming breakfast

into bread seeded by imps, single grains pinched

plump in their fingers. They stoke the oven, the

minutes rolling over with the turn of a crank shaft.

Eternity toast cooks low and slow, anxiety crisping

my edges. I am a wind-up frog, primed to hop.

The crumbs of stolen mornings must be marked,

lest the crows take their pick, beaks slick with honey.

BIO: Megan Cartwright (she/her) is a Literature teacher and poet, based in Australia. Her work has recently featured in Contemporary Verse 2, FOMA and The Opiate.