<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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Reunion<\/strong><\/p>\n \u2018Let his path be covered all in red, so Justice<\/em> I<\/p>\n Welcome home, husband. II<\/p>\n Our ancient oven hisses dark fumes The presents you pile high as mountains, The Desert<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019ll colour a colley bird black as my heart, <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Katy\u00a0Evans-Bush<\/strong> is the author of Me and the Dead<\/em> (Salt) and Oscar & Henry<\/em> (Rack Press). She edits the online literary magazine Horizon Review, blogs at Baroque in Hackney, and tutors independently and for the Poetry School. Egg Printing Explained is due from Salt in spring 2011.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Reunion \u2018Let his path be covered all in red, so Justice can lead him back into his home\u2019 Clytaemnestra I Welcome home, husband. At last. Observe, I spread this, a red carpet at your feet. Greet your pretty children. Walk with me and watch me work. II Our ancient oven hisses dark […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[25,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-twelve-days-of-christmas-2010","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22651"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24267,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22651\/revisions\/24267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n can lead him back into his home\u2019<\/em>
\nClytaemnestra<\/p>\n
\nAt last. Observe,
\nI spread this,
\na red carpet
\nat your feet.
\nGreet your pretty children.
\nWalk with me and watch me work.<\/p>\n
\nas the Christmas goose spits in its pan,
\na pudding steams in the heat of my breath
\nand I am sweating kerosene into the gravy.<\/p>\n
\nthese are not apologies or offerings
\nor even hunting trophies, but
\nfuneral pyres. I dream of midnight arson,
\nwrapping paper kindling,
\nmultiple explosions of triple-a batteries
\nas glass-blue eyeballs combust
\nand helpless, disfigured heads
\nroll towards my waiting lap.
\nJacqueline Saphra<\/strong>\u2019s poetry has been widely published and her plays performed on stage and television. She has won several awards including first prize in the Ledbury Poetry Competition. Her pamphlet, Rock\u2019n\u2019Roll Mamma (Flarestack) will be followed this year by her first collection The Kitchen of Lovely Contraptions (flipped eye \u2013 supported by The Arts Council of England.)<\/p>\n
\nblack as your heart, blacker than love,
\nand give it to you, and its blue-black coat
\nwill hold you in its feather mirror and prove
\nthat light is in the dark, that pigment augments
\nthe auguries of light by being their opposite:
\nthat dark is bright. In the bleak desert
\nit\u2019s the blackbird will see you home, not the dove.
\nThe dove would come to pieces at the first dart
\nof unrefracted light, his pearly breast
\nno match for the shaft of truth on the native hearth.
\nI say native \u2013 all of us live there who must move
\nour hearts to find a place for them to stay
\nwhen staying still is never still enough, when still
\nmakes of the heart a target. The blackbird
\nwill lead you forward under camouflage,
\nunder cover of night, lit by the flares of starlight,
\nalong the path of Kings who, by a faith
\neven than coal more impenetrably dark \u2013
\nby which I mean \u2018more richly pigment-stuffed\u2019,
\nseamed with being, alive with particles,
\neach particle housing a mystery; not just \u2018more light-deprived\u2019 \u2013
\nwho, as I say, found themselves by faith at the start
\nof everything. On the other side of the desert you will come \u2013
\nholding this black, sleek, mirror-shining, solid
\nbeing, whose heartbeats will splinter off in your hand
\nand fall on the sand, so fast, so small, so hard,
\nthe enchanted flower, the elixir, the fountain, the infant \u2013
\nat last to the reflection of your own beating heart.
\nThat will be, if I can give it to you, my gift.<\/p>\n