Lullaby Cinders by Maria Sledmere

Hush now, there is nothing  

left to recruit of the universe / murmuring  

skyward the unidentified flying Objet d’art  

ornaments the four-dimensional plane  

cindering duplicate perfumes / on the dark web  

ideation point of service / selling us art flux  

confusing this flesh for dog tongues of the mortally loyal  

flourish of silence in the safeguard between our eyes  

first-hand / lovemade quantum clovering  

blue glare / of wanting too much  

now we are related to aliens and fallen  

from union our children set their wings  

in the livelihood of the tax credit  

forgetting your passwords forever / things will get  

harder / richer / brighter / stronger  

in dreams of humiliating real estate  

time will come crying to your ma’s  

star treatment / you must think she  

stitched me / early onset corpseflower  

in 24/7 bloom

fail-sun / earth pill of the president  

singing this tale of the comet  

come for you, little  

burning world  

conflict of our limbic / cartoon attempts  

at energy price cap / fear of cancer / genetic  

inheritance of statistical probabilities  

a sun dial hangs over the mull  

lulling us into malodorous solitude  

and violet nurture  

shale gas of shallow language  

and nobody is official / demure policy  

dox of the century embers  

in thrash metal  

flurrying into vending materials  

choosing the same old tumour  

our noise scorched barbarism of leaving  

the planet / don’t believe  

warmth / wrath / war-  

torn freezing to death  

is never a choice  

like sleep has its  

beatific cognitive nepotism  

holding us in golden valerian  

chromosome remix  

to employ our pain in / the hoax  

capacity of aspirin / light years away  

from each other’s ghost software of  

having been serviced

to embrocate the moons  

in silver morphine  

making me ill / lullaby  

apologia for breathing / dust mite  

satellites / the content addiction  

of being anyone for any length of  

human time / trembling  

as scullery maid of the milky wayback  

machine doing idle recovery  

pronoun effluvia of our past in plural  

for “I’m scared” “post comment” say “politics  

is dying to meet you” in hell / gulls  

will fall out the blackening sky  

cop show of loss  

apocalypse could still change back  

into the babe that dreamt  

selling adjunct lecturing to the stars  

for wage minerals eating what’s left  

crying acid houses of loving kindness  

to hallucinate the lousy idea  

close your eyes into ashes  

until it is over, hush now

———————-

Maria Sledmere (she/they) is an Ayrshire-raised, Glasgow-based academic, artist, educator and editor working between text, image and theory.

First published in Cinders (Krupskaya, 2024). Available on Asterism.