CIRCLE
It eels up inside you
Naked naiad, nocturnal neanias
It curls in your belly
Coiled and inky and slick with oil
Wake up, check the nightstand. Phone, keys, wallet. A half-smoked pack of imported cigarettes. A Bic lighter.
Roll over, sheets drenched in something acrid and animal. Crack the window, hot air thick enough to swallow.
Sheathed in plastic— an eater,
And a drinker,
And a purger,
Thirteen missed calls, no ID. Ribcage cracks, spine cracks, bony feet crack as they meet the cool floorboards. Violent light, red in the morning, shepherds warning. Mouth full of fur, iron and vapour. Flick the flint, spark up a dart, leave the body where it lies.
Sliced through the middle, a belly full of fish
Neptune’s trident births a writhing litter
By cesarian
She answers on the second ring. A thousand words, a thousand come save me’s. Silence. And then the quiet, stunted syllables. Casual cruelty. She is crying softly, hear it through the static. The sharp, stuttering intake of air.
I wade into you again
Make myself at home inside your skin
Wear you like a silken shift
Fifty push-ups. Twenty lay-ups. A thirty minute sprint that leaves your shins splintered. Cave over. Vomit brine back into the river. Pop the blister packet and then you can go home. To the flat with the room with the bed with the body with the stains of your fingers all over its skin.
I crawl home on scraped palms and knees
Wet and needling as a kicked dog
Teeth, needlesharp and poised
To bite the breast that weeps
Scarlet Mcpherson, 22, Brisbane - Australia ✯ BACK TO POETRY: OUROBOROS
“My name is Scarlet Mcpherson, I’m twenty-two and I hail from Australia’s secret sweaty armpit, Brisbane. I’ve just (and I mean JUST) completed my degree in English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Queensland and am currently in that strange twilight zone we all seem to find ourselves in after completing a degree that, by and large, has absolutely no practical use whatsoever.
As a First Nations author, my work tends to be heavily influenced by patterns of a cyclical nature, circles of ancestral trauma that appear and reappear over generations. This particular piece focus’ on the relationship of mothers and daughters, the cycle of LOVE/HATE/LOVE/HATE that repeats over and over ad nauseam. Loving and hating and resenting and appreciating and hating and loving my mother is my Roman Empire (and my Ouroboros).”