3 poems by Corinna Board

Mædwe

I pasture / sweet vernal, dogstail / I grassgrow—a green

sea / I seed / wind-carried over hedge / I am all edges /

fenced in / cornered / crop mother—I kindle wheat / I am

picked clean / left idle, I fallow / furrows seep coins, flint,

clay pipes / once, I tree’d / an arboreal memory / child of

Anthropocene / freed, I meadow / I petal for the sun /

yarrow, cowslip, knapweed, campion / pollen-ripe, I

butterfly / I carder bee / alive / yes, I breathe

do you speak field?

it’s sunrise sunset

or the space in between

perhaps there is rain

I’m trying to listen

grass spills its syllables

mycelium whispers

dead leaves / ash keys

worm’s slow accordion

I’m trying to listen

the field

drops a rabbit in my path

shock of a fox

a handful of crows

the hedge puffs out sparrows

& angry blackbirds

I’m trying to listen

[minnow-shimmer] [watersong] [blush of crayfish understone]

I am trying to make sense of it all

to translate it into my one language

Picking up my prescription

Sometimes as an antidote to fear of death, I eat the stars – Rebecca Elson

There are no stars in this city.

I nibble on concrete,

sip cocktails of NO₂. I’m dying

for a decent constellation.

Would some of those neons do?

Or the flashing red lights on a high-rise?

I FaceTime Olivier in the Pyrenees.

He points his camera at Ursa Major,

Cassiopeia, Orion’s Belt…

Star after star devoured

through my screen. I whisper Merci,

then sleep like a baby.

When the woman in Boots

tells me I’m glowing,

I say it must be the new meds.

I keep quiet about the stars.

On the tube ride home, they twinkle

in my stomach like a Tiffany’s heist.

_____________

Corinna Board teaches EAL in Oxford. She grew up on a farm, and her writing is often inspired by the rural environment. She particularly enjoys exploring our connection to the more-than-human. Instagram @parole_de_reveuse or X/Twitter @CorinnaBoard

These poems were selected by Anthropocene guest editor Tom Branfoot.