KIRSTEN IRVING

Kirsten Irving is a student at the University of East Anglia, about to begin the final year of an American Literature and Creative Writing degree. She is currently working on a joint collection of poetry, Spitfire and Shuriken, with author Jon Stone and on her first solo collection, provisionally titled Covering Tracks. She has spent the last year studying in New Orleans, where she has served on the editorial board for the poetry section of the Tulane Review.

THE DAY WE CAUGHT THE COMET

It lay,
quaking like a palsied compass,
in our arms,
spluttering gold,
for its mouth was full of crowns,
and as our hands touched
then gripped
beneath its waxy back,
the radio sent out
the first report
and the three of us looked,
like can-can marionettes,
to the sky

ROCK DOVE

On Norman arches, pouting
like an impatient figurehead,
confused as to the vessel's subtle motion,
on some scoured and hostile
no-browse rooftop,
where you can loiter,
lording it over fly-mummies,
waiting for some fat, arachnid waitress
to take them,
like detainees to the cane.

You crouch above,
a box of tricks,
a name half-in
and half-moraine.

They want a dove
to steer away
a slap, a coin of spit,
a muttered charm
of nothing-good-will-come;
to prise apart opponents,
to blanket out
and bathe in ambrosiac plumage.
Even feather tufts will bleach out slurs.

But they don't want a rock dove,
as grey and passed around as
melted broadsheets at the pulpers,
as year-old bedsheets,
as pigeons staring, blinkered, past
the itching claws
and spats-in-waiting
to scan for scraps.

You, too closely cousined to granite
to head-up and resolve
a tug-of-war
between black and white.

MYRRH

The first goes first,
his gift shining
like a segment of our blinding guide.
Trailing it, like crumbs,
eyes. Here ours, soon thousands.

My second brother
follows, gazing skyward
as hordes of white-winged scents
fly from his hands,
besieging us with falling feathers

I, with this dumb salve,
come third and stumble,
too busy knotting my robes
over how to explain to a baby,
to a mother, what it means.