The Ofi Press Magazine

Fatras

1

Above us, the bellies of seagulls

on the window by your bed.

Above us, the bellies of seagulls.

Everything duplicate in shadows:

blackbird on the aerial, the luminous mosses,

your broken words, half-spoken sentences.

The scrolls of your eyes...

You advise:

Don’t look at a new moon

through glass or water.

and

Place a psalm of David

on the window by your bed.

2

The mountains are scalloped with snow,

pheasant wings beating in the glove box.

The mountains are scalloped with snow.

Water glittering through a dead hedge.

Sunlit gorse, downy birch, the Holy Loch

dragging its hair east of the estuary.

I see the crows of Ardentinny

you said, as we drove through the hollow of the road,

trees touching above us,

pheasant wings beating in the glove box.

3

She pairs her nails into cracks in the wall

uncommitted to breath.

She pairs her nails into cracks in the wall,

reading poems to a dead poinsettia.

The woodburner in her chest,

kindling of her ribcage

fired by the word-birds, unspoken,

uncommitted to breath.

4

Standing in the loch, waist deep

and the wading hills drawing her in.

Standing in the loch, waist deep.

Curls of dull light, her white dress,

band of orange skirting the water.

The clouds closing in on her.

Brittle branches make obeisance at her side,

sensing the suck of the fresh water loch

and the wading hills drawing her in.

Poem By Marion MacCready (Scotland)

Published in Issue 27

Marion McCready was born on the Isle of Lewis and lives in the west coast of Scotland. She studied Politics, Classics and Philosophy at Glasgow University. Marion has had poems published in a variety of magazines and anthologies including The Glasgow Herald, The Edinburgh Review and Gutter. Her debut poetry pamphlet collection, Vintage Sea, was published by Calder Wood Press (2011). Marion is a recent recipient of a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award and is currently working on her first full-lengh poetry collection.