Helen Nancy Meneilly

augmentation through fire

in the pre-life eddy
i capsized, came out all wrong.
dragged the whole ordeal out
along the nape of the morning’s neck.
they gave me a name that i scraped
from my tongue, the way
the sun’s cyclops eye
scrapes colour from the air. lurched
into love with an artist, someone
who would weep with me
when we watched our lady
broken down to a charred skeleton;
what was left when the flames were done
worrying the meat like worms.
we were clearing out the box room;
a discovery of cobwebs and jilted scarves.
watching the spire drifting
in cinders, to join joan in the seine.
discussing the loss, the ash,
the dust. how everything
used to be something else.

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Helen Nancy Meneilly is an Irish poet and MA student. Recently highly commended in the 2022 Hastings Book Festival Poetry Competition, her work has also appeared in The Orchards Poetry Journal, Gyroscope Review, The Metaworker and others.