Re-wilding
Two hundred metres away, he stops
dead on the hill, his feet deep
in grass unpunctuated
by the tree seedlings he ripped out
the moment they emerged.
She stands upwind with a shotgun.
She grallochs the deer,
leaving his guts in the thin soil
he’s stripped of green. Later
she cuts off his penis, emerges
from the butcher room
aproned and smeared,
holding his herbivore head
as outside, uneaten,
the blaeberry shoots sprout.
Gralloch – to remove the intestines of a shot deer
Owning light
Sierra Leone
The fireflies carry
their own glows in their bellies,
hanging their net of lights
like laundry across the bushes,
pulsars flickering
on and off in the dark
they translate luciferase and ATP
into a conversation
silenced everywhere else
by a cacophony of streetlamps.
______________
Fiona Cartwright is a poet and conservation scientist living near London. Her poems have appeared in various journals and magazines, including Magma, Mslexia, Under the Radar, Interpreter’s House and Ink, Sweat and Tears. Her debut pamphlet, Whalelight, was published by Dempsey and Windle in 2019.
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