Zoe Mitchell
Some women are born to work with knives.
Just as some sing or stir their words, I
stand in the dark behind my clan, their guilty
secret. They need the smallest eye cut
from a creature, skin, sinew and bloody shanks
to fill their blackened pots with magic.
They say my arched back lacks music –
my shoulder rotates to penetrate an innocent
or a petty accuser on their behalf but they will not
let me dance. They can’t cauterise their disgust
at the ominous shapes I offer up to moonlight.
My liberty lives in the murky corners
other women wilfully ignore. I live my life
forever behind a half-open cupboard door;
everyone knows I’m there but no one wants
to acknowledge my steel. I can shatter bone.
I know my true sisters from the blood under
their fingernails. Like me, they have the soul
of a surgeon, the eyes of a butcher and the stealth
of a mother with a sleeping child. We watch over
our stew of secrets and when the time comes,
advance from the kitchen and cut out your tongue.
***
Zoe Mitchell lives and works on the South Coast. She has been published in a number of national poetry magazines including The Rialto, The London Magazine and The Moth. She is currently studying for a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Chichester, focused on witches in women’s writing. She recently won the Indigo-First Collection Competition and her first poetry collection will be published by Indigo Dreams Publishing in 2019. www.twitter.com/WritingByZoe