iona bosvill
When winter rains wrench and wuther,
stealing their fingers into cracks and crannies,
I’ll straddle your roof like I sprawled
over the covers of your chamber’s bed.
I was born from this cursed land
and you have taken half of everything.
The sheets were knotted on your legs:
Did you think you could walk away?
Did you think the banshee scream
you forced from the core of me
did not foretell a death in the family?
You are tenderised human meat,
your razorblade scars,
the sketchy tattoo you got at eighteen;
and the ones of halflight are always hungry.
I’m here for your love, a succubus;
Or gold, or your soul, bearing in mind
Your sly deal leaving me damned
To the world below the surface.
My cry will shake the clothes in the closet,
Rattle the brown cat, fat by the fire.
***
Iona Bosvill is a British, West Country-based writer and heavy metal fan of Irish and Romani descent. Having roamed the South West and the Midlands of England for most of her youth, she eventually emigrated to South Korea for work, an unthinkable idea for her parents’ generation, experiencing and witnessing massive social changes there in a seaside city community. After a long weekend in Taiwan she fell in love with the tropical nation and sought a job there, becoming involved in activism and meeting a retired revolutionary, before coming back to England older and possibly wiser. Having attended Oxford on scholarships as an adult student, she is about as comfortable – or uncomfortable – in a ballgown as a band t shirt and a leather jacket.