O, Queen Anne

She walks her self out in to the garden
She works her self out in to the garden
It is open closed is the garden
So to leave her self out              out    in the garden
In the grass    in the earth      in the stuff
Of the garden       she works her self out
In     to the garden

What’s between leaves between fingers & teeth
Between feathers & face between thighs

Down soothes inside & the exhale makes hot
Hands full of lace      mouth full of seeds

& she lies her self down flat in the grass
Where the land lifts and seals with her back

& she works her self out in to the garden

What’s between blades beneath nails
What’s between roots between feathers
& the weight of her plumage draws her head
To the ground to the grass to the earth
With her mouth full of seeds hands full of flowers

Leaves’ lace is a blister there
Where skin’s film proves porous
But she opens her arms and starts digging
In in to the garden with her mouth
Full of seeds hands full of mulch
Under finger nails lichen & moss

Strix prints eyes’ shadow in the cowl of the join
Where the river flows low for the body
& she works her self out out in to the garden
Blackens her bracken to soil back back to the earth
At the hearth of the moon at the altar
Where gaze razes the ground & lifts off to the sky
Sifting silt into sand in the current
& the body can fly swimming deep
In the river of earth in the tide
& the time growing forward against
           & against & against

She walks her self out in to the garden
She works her self out in to the garden
It is open       closed is the garden
    She leaves her self out out in the garden
In the grass    in the earth     in the stuff of the
Out in the      out      in the garden

 

Note: ‘But she opens her arms and starts digging’ is borrowed from Aurélia Lassaque, ‘And don’t look back’, Pour que chantent les salamandres. ‘Blackens her bracken to soil back back to the earth’ borrows Alice Tarbuck’s ‘bracken / blackening back to soil suggests instead / slow / alteration’, Grid.

Jazmine Linklater has published the pamphlets Toward Passion According (Zarf, 2017) and Découper, Coller (Dock Road Press, 2018). She works for T-Junction International Poetry Festival and Carcanet Press, and co-organises No Matter, a new experimental reading series in Manchester. She is one of three poets chosen by Poetry London for mentoring in 2018-19, and is mentored by Vahni Capildeo.