compost speaks
by Claire Collison
For accessibility we are also publishing the poem below as plain text rather than an image:
compost speaks
by Claire Collison
in the end is my beginning / break me down and / make me new again / i compose and / decompose / i outpoet the poets / i verb / i verb / i verb / i’m mulch / lasagna three to one / green / brown / green / green / i’m worm workshop / soft play for fungi / spin cycle for fungal fitness / for fingal funness / i’m fundamental. / Rotters in your gloves that will outlast you / tuck me in / take my temperature / keep me airy / keep me moist / feed me / bless the worms and turn me / i in turn will ground you / i am your filthy baby / and your god / whet your blades / chop chop / tell me your non-secateurs / talk dirty / talk bacterial / elemental / toads / orange / nitrogen / carbon / nitrites / i rot discernibly / month / on month / on month / on month / i compostulate / i am Irish teacake / i am ammonium / break it down / i am a proper mess / i am the meaning of life.
Conversation with a Plantain Tree
by Kara Barlow
Deepa told me that when I miss the jungle, I can ask the trees anywhere for a message because trees speak to other trees across vast expanses. I was twenty-four, standing on the roof in the dark just as it was beginning to rain, & the rain shimmered off the leaves of the plantain tree & the pink scales of the shampoo ginger. That day Juan Carlos had split open a yellow-green cacao fruit & asked me to suck. I’d spent hours painting white poison on the leaves the zompopos were marching to their underground fortresses in unending primordial lines. Other days we sliced plantains & dried them & grated them for flour or fried them for chips or extracted them for moonshine. Every night the rain pounded the walls & the roof reminding me of the pointlessness of regret & how ridiculous it was that I’d begun to fall in love with cows. Deepa said people have vivid dreams in the jungle so it was normal to dream of abandonment over & over again, but still I did not believe trees commune with trees on other continents until after passing the senna & oleander, tropical hydrangea & sea hibiscus clustered together indiscriminately in this greenhouse with strange names like dombeya x cayeuxii & hibiscus tiliaceus & recognized the plantain tree with no sign, & touched a single, broad leaf, & asked it what strange Latin name they would have tried to disguise it under.
Iztirab اضطراب
meaning restlessness
by Kara Barlow
The toucans’ shrill call / the hallucinogenic toads a dog could die from licking / the orioles sighing in the branches of the passion- fruit tree / the sky that is no longer a sky when seen from below the net of the strangler fig & sacred ceiba / the machete meant for cutting which instead makes love to the fallen tree / the underbrush which is no longer green or even yellow but ultramarine: in my dreams each night you leave me saying you will understand with time / saying you are no longer mine but the days pass & no understanding comes even when I stand inside a cistern & scrub the stoic walls of stone which retain their marbled grit waiting for the clear stream’s return— I am telling you: I would make love to the leaves / I would lay my bare skin against water running down the mountain & spread out my legs— anything for the touch of tenderness so that in my visions you would no longer abandon me & desire pointed as the blood-red-orange heliconia would no longer blossom in my breasts / no! no more would I stand alone here, cradling a split cacao & sucking the white membrane from the bitter seeds & spitting them one after another into the earth moist & speechless with longing.
Kara Barlow is a trilingual poet with an MA in Poetry from Queen’s University Belfast. She has lived internationally and considers her work a translation exercise between trauma, resilience, and longing. Her poems have been published in the Bear Review, Letters Journal, Ragaire, and the Silver Press Tendrils anthology.
“In a world divided between blind optimism and despairing cynicism, we need visions of hope that call for a commitment to seeing ourselves as a species in community with the earth and other creatures. Thrutopian writing presents such a vision, and poetry has a prophetic power to reimagine our future.” ~ Kara Barlow
Poet, visual artist and educator, Claire Collison won the inaugural Women Poets’ Prize 2018 and is a founder member of Poets for the Planet. Her debut pamphlet Placebo is published by Blueprint Press. Claire volunteers with The Rotters, compost makers at Brockwell Park Community Gardens.
“I’m inspired by the transformative qualities of poetry and compost. Compost has duende. Thrutopia felt like an excellent fit.” ~ Claire Collison
Welcome to day one of the latest edition of Bending The Arc! Tomorrow we’ll bring you a story of resilience…
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