Eliza Mood - Poetry
“A housemaid drowned up there.”
Out of bounds;
the flue above the broom cupboard,
illicit entry point to the attic,
still, above the tossing dorms.
We marvel at the tank’s depth,
outlined in unofficial morning half-light,
its water piped to fifty baths below,
where each afternoon
we shut eyes and float,
blotting out Chinese whispers;
hermaphrodite, plebs
and words with secret meanings
such as crease.
Did she take flight from a mobbing,
a murder of words
lest a frisking unfurl
some secret knowledge of herself?
Did she stand on the edge and plunge
into a wordless place?
Butterfly
The day you cracked the egg
and found the ‘Fire Queen’ match box
and in it, dried, a Brimstone
Butterfly, green-yellow of corn
on the brink of summer;
you did not hold the heel
that crushed it.
The day you opened a crack
in childhood’s tight-lipped
front door, too late to lay
the faceted lens back in its box
or shut out bare bookshelves;
you did not drown
the drumming of boots.
The day your new-wed finger
shivered the thorn to shreds
of Adonis Blue; you let
fall the ring and glimpsed
your face in a puddle of sky,
moments before its unbluing
by a tightly-laced black shoe.
"A housemaid drowned up there" was first published in Envoi June 2006
Issue 144
'Butterfly' was first published in Coffeee House Poetry, May 06, issue 9
