Kali Richmond

Comfort

The doll is covered in plastic
fur and wears two black beads
as eyes. The doll is mostly orange
but is white at the tip of its tufted
ears, at the end of its tulip
tail. The doll is an animal,
found, father says, because it
yipped as he prowled the park —
a distraction, he is no hound,
his bloodlusts other. It yipped,
father says, and he cracked
open the hawthorn, extracted
the doll, told it he knows just the girl.
The doll is warmed by her body
heat, the doll rises with her breath.
The doll’s eyes follow you
across the room. The doll feeds
on secrets and shame. See its fur oil
with the grease of the living.
The doll soaks up sweet tendrils
of psychedelic smoke. She holds it
to her nose and thinks of home.
The doll reeks of child labour
and turf wars and thirty to a cell.
She breathes deep and thinks
of her father, of his vehement
belief that fox hunting is wrong.


In the nursery

the horse gifts its bones
and industrious we lash them

to arched wood
so the children may rock

towards comfort
while the skin gallops free

as a kite in the wind
dear nanny engorged

coaxing children to suckle
beneath reeking breath

beneath oracular spectre
hair straining free

legs hinged wide
embodying cold walls

so the girls may learn
what is expected of marriage


after Leonora Carrington’s Self-portrait (Inn of the Dawn Horse)

Kali Richmond is a writer based in York. Her debut pamphlet of ecopoetry is Gradual Reduction to Bone (Nine Pens 2021)

Twitter: https://twitter.com/SevenKali