Olga Dermott-Bond

Spin the bottle

I was both meteor and desert sand
once the vodka bottle had pointed
to me. There was so much I didn’t

know – how to kiss a boy, where
Libya was on the map of the world.
Someone’s birthday; dressed up

in my sister’s make-up, scoop neck
and White Musk. I don’t remember
whose house it was, but recall my

stomach marble-tight with fear, a boy
with glasses, who had done this before.
I shut my eyes early, tried not to think

of everyone else waiting cross-legged
for their turn, that head-tilt spinning
me to moldavite, ghost of this new heat

concealed beneath bodyshop lip balm.

Borrowed light

i.
he was sitting on the bed
when she came out of the shower

the tiny rowing boat
of her belly button spilling

with water. He held her face
told her she was enough –

ii.
She listened to his absence
drank cheap wine, chose

a new colour for her bedroom
as shortening days dried out across

stricken streets, painted borrowed
light as high as she could reach.



Hare

night full of running,
half-shadowed under winter’s
tarnished moon. Dark fields

full of cracked mirrors
glance at her slender bones, face,
catching a fragment

of silver, filled with
heather, willow, thyme –
storm-body breaking

fast, scudding away,
spilling past hard promises
no man ever keeps.




Olga is originally from Northern Ireland and lives in Warwickshire. She has had two poetry pamphlets published, apple, fallen (Against the Grain Press) and A Sky Full of Strange Specimens (Nine Pens Press). @olgadermott