The Gravity of Abattoirs
Flowers of mercury
fall from our mouths.
Thoughts crepitate
on bleached stone
and briars curl
in the thickets
bones lie
in the dust of lunar oceans.
Moss undulates
but in your liver
a china pebble stirs
and the skies
are vaulted with
arterial tracery.
Doppelgänger
We live above. Despite the loll
of heavy blooms
termite feudality
reigns
ignore our lungs
of steel wool
we are pillars of decay
wrapped in a pall
cauls of coal
long forgotten
homes
a lake of mercury
petrified woods
Far down below. Slowly bells toll.
Uprooted
When shores crumble
flee to the woods
weave a wattle throne
find leaves for your hair
make an arbour
of silence and decay
settle your flurries
these places are the robes
often forgotten
but they remember
when our kings
wrote
on the flayings of
forest gods
when artifice mirrored
the groves in stone.
Now,
jingling
staring up at
the branch which
hangs us
torn from the
cocoon
black avalanches
muffle the green bells.
There are no runes
in the knot of the noose.
The silver is too heavy
the air too thin.
—
Marcus Berian Nicholls currently lives in London, where he is studying for a PhD in Adaptation Studies and Decadent Literature. His work has appeared in The Missing Slate and the anthology The Dance Is New (Mardibooks).