Canopy
Emily Berry


The weather was inside.

The branches trembled over the grass as if to apologise; then
they thumped and they came in.

And the trees shook everything off until they were bare and
clean. They held on to the ground with their long feet and leant
into the gale and back again.

This was their way with the wind.

They flung us down and flailed above us with their visions and 
their pale tree light.

I think they were telling us to survive. That's what a leaf feels
like anyway. We lay under their great awry display and they
tattooed us with light.

They got inside us and made us speak; I said my first word in
their language: 'canopy'.

I was crying and it felt like I was feeding. Be my mother, I said
to the trees, in the language of trees, which can't be transcribed,
and they shook their hair back, and they bent low with their
many arms, and they looked into my eyes as only trees can
look into the eyes of a person, they touched me with the rain
on their fingers till I was all droplets, till I was mist, and they said
that they would.

Aura
Emily Berry


listen to me                         little water
I called you up        believing something
would arise                   i n me believing
I could make                     you reappear
on my way                    to the cemetery
every face was                        luminous
as if they knew            something about
the dark                               I think you
were in us all             reminding me not
to despair or if             despairing know
that we did not             lose each other
either side                    of the calamity
we fused                      you went inside
& I could not                            see you
but afterwards                    afterwards
I could see                       underwater I
could see in the dark           I could see
with my eyes closed     I could see past
the shimmer that   separates the living
and the dead I knew there was nothing
no separation                      it was just
aura the most                    remarkable
sadness &                      if only I would
keep looking                I would see you

Procession
Emily Berry


Once I had a day mother

Now I have a night mother

Mourners no longer murmuring

In the late afternoon

                              *

They say we are doomed to repeat ourselves

So I threw away my fate

The sun went in behind a cloud and all the daffodils darkened

                              *

Relics of ancient rituals

A house by the sea with no view of the sea

No lamps burning at this hour

                              *

Every day the loss of light

The new year comes in, carrying all my language

I do not know if it is bringing or taking away

                              *

Last time, last time...

I might feel infinitely wise as though it must show from a
    certain angle

When I saw the sea after many months it was such a meeting

Numerous dreams about rain, flooding, and bathing

                              *

Once I saw my mother rowing

At night across water

I called to her and she looked back

Smiling beautifully

Francesca
Ezra Pound

You came in out of the night
And there were flowers in your hands,
Now you will come out of a confusion of people,
Out of a turmoil of speech about you.

I who have seen you amid the primal things
Was angry when they spoke your name 
In ordinary places.
I would that the cool waves might flow over my mind,
And that the world should dry as a dead leaf,
Or as a dandelion seed-pod and be swept away,
So that I might find you again, 
Alone.

T
Emily Berry


This hope              with Australian wild peach
              is what keeps me going
                    I spell your name
with macadamia nut            never mind jojoba
                                                      One oil is the aroma
the other is the carrier              Often I wonder:
              how does the carrier feel?
                I always see hierarchy
Some letter of the alphabet, for example
are more powerful                                  T is one
T is such a strong character...

            Top note, heart note, base note:
which would you rather be?              I call my dad
to ask what botanicals were in vogue in his day
Whenever I pick up the phone I hear the sea
             Maybe balsam? he says
Sometimes the last one you think of
             is the one who'll know

Bird
Liz Berry


When I became a bird, Lord, nothing could not stop me.

              The air feathered
                                            as I knelt
by my open window for the charm —
                                           black on gold,
                                        last star of the dawn.

Singing, they came:
                             throstles, jenny wrens,
jack squalors swinging their anchors through the clouds.

              My heart beat like a wing.

I shed my nightdress to the drowning arms of the dark,
my shoes to the sun's widening mouth.

                                Bared,
   I found my bones hollowing to slender pipes,
       my shoulder blades tufting down.
             I   spread    my flight-greedy arms
to watch my fingers jewelling like ten hummingbirds,
my feet callousing to knuckly claws.
              As my lips calcified to a hooked kiss

silence

              then an exultation of larks filled the clouds
and, in my mother's voice, chorused:
        Tek flight, chick, goo far fer the winter.

So I left girlhood behind me like a blue egg
                                                    and stepped off
                               from the window ledge.

How light I was

as they lifted me up from Wren's Nest
bore me over the edgelands of concrete and coal.

I saw my grandmother waving up from her fode,
                              looped
    the infant school and factory,
                     let the zephrs carry me        out to the coast.

Lunars I flew

                      battered and tuneless

      the storms turned me inside out like a fury,
there wasn't one small part of my body didn't bawl.

Until I felt it at last        the rush of squall thrilling my wing
                  and I knew my voice
was no longer words but song        black upon black.

I raised my throat to the wind
                                      and this is what I sang...





charm birdsong or dawn chorus
jack squalor swallow
fode yard

Always & Forever
Ocean Vuong


Open this when you need me most,
                        he said, as he slid the shoe box, wrapped

in duct tape, beneath my bed. His thumb,
                        still damp from the shudder between mother's

thighs, kept circling the mole above my brow.
                        The devil's eye blazed between his teeth

or was he lighting a joint? It doesn't matter. Tonight
                        I wake & mistake the bathwater wrung

from mother's hair for his voice. I open
                        the shoe box dusted with seven winters

& here, sunk in folds of yellowed news
                        -paper, lies the Colt .45 — silent & heavy

as an amputated hand. I hold the gun
                        & wonder if an entry wound in the night

would make a hole wide as morning. That if
                        I looked through it, I would see the end of this

sentence. Or maybe just a man kneeling
                        at the boy's bed, his grey overalls reeking of gasoline

& cigarettes. Maybe the day will close without
                        the page turning as he wraps his arms around

the boy's milk-blue shoulders. The boy pretending
                        to be asleep as his father's clutch tightens.

The way the barrel, aimed at the sky, must tighten
                        around the bullet

to make it speak