Deer Medicine
In night white with birch and moon
your heart hears hooves
crossing its wide plateau
a slow steady pulse keeping time
with its own.
To think they argued
reconstruction only way to go –
silastic implant
and tissue expander –
few surgeries later
who would know?
Unable to handle your logic
they couldn’t see it
when you said
someone changed
so many ways
might not want to look the same?
Instead you chose
hand-mixed inks
from a recipe book
over a hundred years old.
Cadmium & witch hazel
ochre & shell
ambering a deep round eye.
And as yours is held
wild pearls spun
from the areola of the moon
winter a red deer’s breath.
The Wood Worker
In the hollow hours
her fingers censer coffee smoke
before low umber sounds
of chisel on gouge
draw out a hairline
a jaw a chin
a half moon beneath each eye
a mouth hewn to steady smile
and the pitchers
brimming stars and water
pendant from both ears.
When the rest rise
the whole piece polished
to an even shine.
Marvelling at the strength
it takes to turn oak
we find sixteen hands
of Arabian horse
unbroken in its grainy ghost
and seeing the grace
etched in every line and groove
we tell her how well
she has done
how well she is doing.
Telling till leaves bud
on cheeks of dark seasoned wood.
Dora’s Second Dream
after Fragments of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria
~ Sigmund Freud
Sitting behind a phalanx of Egyptians gods
his watch chain looped
on the waistcoat of a three piece suit
he asks how a girl of fourteen
kissed by a prepossessing still young man
could fail to be excited.
Ida spelt Dora brought to 19 Berggasse –
schtum he should have kept
shelved in the name of a science
unable to see omens and spells
concertinaed on finest Chinese paper,
the cosmologies and maps
on pages of wood and bone
shell and silk,
from his chair in the corner unable to see
her brush brought to malachite
orpiment and ultramarine swept across pages
of milk white skin.
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Poetry from the Winner of British Haiku Award 2017
About the contributor
Clare McCotter won The British Haiku Award 2017, The British Tanka Award 2013 and The HIS Dóchas Ireland Haiku Award 2010 and 2011. Her haiku, tanka and haibun have been published in many parts of the world. Her longer poems have appeared in almost thirty journals. Clare was one of three writers featured in Measuring New Writers 1. Black Horse Running, her first collection of haiku, tanka and haibun was published in 2012 by Alba Publishing. Revenant, her first collection of longer poems will be published in August 2019 by Salmon Poetry. Home is Kilrea County Derry.