Queen Conch
My spirit animal is a sovereign sea snail. A part-time anchoress,
anchored to her cell. Mindful custodian of the tender parts.
Chapel of the heart, where fragility is treasured.
I distil to flesh and shell. A starfish clambers aboard
my roof hewn from the waves. A dipping tide uncovers
my mollusc symptom as a blessing. The sun laps down.
Shadows basking below fishing boats explode in the outboard
motor. I tuck my entire delicate self in between my own legs.
O portable cool economy, part holiday-car-boot / part
autumn-chest-freezer. I orbit a very occasional pearl.
Work it out like a puzzle, bead the inaccessible irritation,
wring out value from a bit of grit. I hand-build my bony spiral.
Heavy as a lump hammer, a Pyrex-durable spire,
harbour of coiled spine, see: vertebrate precursor, a prelude,
a thought on the tip of my tongue, and I’m really all tongue,
an evolutionary prototype like Leonardo’s experiments
with helicopter. Of course you’ll stub your toe, yell
selfish shellfish into the shallows. Retreat is a muscular
conviction. Sharks circle, the grazing herd run invertebrate
protocol – eyestalks and snout retract, play dead, go off grid,
kick a labial soft flip, tin lid clicks, fuck you – engaged tone.
Jane Wilkinson a British-Irish writer living in Norwich. Her first collection Eve Said (Live Canon 2023) explores multiple facets of womanhood and experiences of infertility. She won 1 st place in Live Canon’s Collection Prize, Aesthetica Prize and Poetry Society’s Hamish Canham Prize and is widely published in magazines and anthologies.