Louise Mather

Metronome

we have had you / made into stone
it is nothing / the metronome
counting back / the edge / myth
possession / the passage / deceit
we can lie to you / an answer
to be wielded / if chaos / cannot be
made / striking / serenity / golden
alchemy / once an ocean / labyrinth
old malachite / an amulet
from beneath the willow
under the solstice / lapping / coal
of warm fire / you slept beside
the snow / falls / lullaby
gracefully / melts / prints
elfin particles / of opal
marks / on the iris /
were they / always / that way
veiled / embers / crushed
into enclosed palms
when were we / ripped apart
the metronome / counting back
reveries / blades / stars
we never talked / about the day
bequeathed / with gloaming rain
shadows / halcyon / plummeting
umbrellas / spokes / catacombs



Solar Terminus

the luminary / mapping our atriums
with still drawn curtains / soliloquized
reflections / of the nebula / towers
molten-quartz / unguarded
clustered sparks / in welts
blood clouds / fusing / augmenting
to scarlet-gowned tidal / words
of solar flare / ancestral dreams
from Salem / in one exhale
after the lunula / syphoning
blossoms / of melted porcelain
sallow skin / anchored / against
the dawn / an archaic memory
of liquid waves / advancing / beyond
space / departing / photographs
the curve / of the sun / you shouldn't
be here / so I know / all the paths
rivers / roads / are labyrinths
avalanches / they would only
lead back here / the terminus
will annihilate us / every sliver
of being / and there is not
enough time / to wake



Marine

stardust / old snow / the last globes
of light / sea creatures / without wings
or vertebrae / a mirage / to perdition
ridges / of mandarin coral / membranes
ricocheting wavelets / metallic prints of eyes
slow paralysis / succumbing velour
in place of solar ascension / abound
miasmic molecules / blunt glimmer
a myriad of debris / cataclysm
the doorway / grey swirls of smoke / entities
swarm / morsels of words / immortalised
nettles / coiled to legs / kinesis / pierced
hooked / parchment / through
intimate details / expressions / mesmerism
gold-leaf mannequins / in all lands
incantations mercy remorse consonance
our war / to sleep / anonymity / to be
painted blue / marine / penumbra
encompassed / love



Louise Mather is a writer from Northern England and founding editor of Acropolis Journal. Nominated Best of the Net 2021, and a finalist in the Streetcake Writing Prize, her work is published in various print and online literary journals, including Fly on the Wall Press, Crow & Cross Keys, Green Ink Poetry, Nymphs, Hecate Magazine, Feral, Beir Bua Journal and Dust Poetry Magazine. She writes about ancestry, rituals, endometriosis, fatigue and mental health. Twitter @lm2020uk