by Emma Atkins

Moth

New Year’s Eve, I watch

a moth pull itself into the world:

black head dragging white body up the wall.

To a moth, a year is a century.

This will be the first of its kind to see two.

Fireworks will mark its birth,

unless

I get a tissue, wad it up

and smear this pupa

down the magnolia.

Should I start the new year as thus?

Should I start the new year at all?

Or, should I let my soul transfer?

Become a moth –

born again from one century to the next?

Migraine makes my jaw ache,

makes my thoughts melancholic,

clenched as I watch;

waiting for the ibuprofen to kick in,

the new year to kick off,

my damp little bedroom

to birth a moth.

Eostre

the earth mourned her son,

but it was not enough.

the ground hardened and greyed;

the trees turned brittle and bare;

the white-foaming sea roiled and roared,

but it was not enough.

the earth was cold. Jack was colder:

greyer than ground, brittle as branches,

white foam at his infant mouth.

her beautiful boy, another dead winter child.

she would not have it. she would not mourn.

let the earth cry her tears.

she would bring her son home with the blood of his father.

she would end the winter with Jack in her arms.

in her grief, she would become goddess.

but the fates are rarely so kind.

mother to what? this husk of a boy,

moss-clothed and silent.

Jack does not mourn himself,

but Jack is Jack no more.

visits, soundless, with a face that won’t change

and Eostre is changing still.

woman to goddess, winter to spring

all that she might be mother again.

Bailiúchán

They remind me of when the pier burned,

black clouds billowing into an ashen sky,

and ignite a primal urge to run

because something isn't right.

They match the energy of the man, dark coat,

who paces around the gallery.

His up-down lope stokes this feeling

of restless destruction.

I want to ask, say something,

but he isn’t real enough. His colours blend and blur

into rows of monochrome explosions

as if he is part of the collection.

I am driven to leave

by a stink of burning salt-aged beams.

Wasps

caught by the buzzing

half turning

from you – placing a coffee

order inside –

to the pair of wasps

thorax jousting on the cracked paving

grappling for a crevice

louder than the cars idling at the lights

you step from under the café awning –

latte and a hot chocolate,

no cream –

I want to make a joke

about performative male aggression

but I don’t know how to sex wasps

you don’t hear the buzzing

stamp the victor

into gum

as we head for the park

Satisfaction

is the peeling of a gel nail;

the perfect placement of another nail edge

beneath the pigmented plate

to peel it off

whole, revealing

glue-stained pinkness.

Dressing is less ritual than historically,

but, in this, there’s the release

of corset strings,

the scrub of rouge from a high cheek.

There is the deep satisfaction

of being finished

with high femininity:

returning to my swaddling,

safe in the knowledge that someone

must’ve mistook my DIY

for a forty-quid manicure.

I draw the performance to a close,

affix hangnail between teeth

and gnaw.

There is no greater

satisfaction

than the well-earned taboo.

BIO: Emma Atkins is a poet and novelist currently studying for her PhD at Middlesex University. She has been writing poetry since 2018. Her poetry has been featured in publications including the Stony Thursday Poetry Book, Amsterdam Quarterly, Stripes Magazine, t'ART Online, StepAway Magazine and others.

five poems

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