I S S U E 2

Ellora Sutton

Coven/Transfiguration

We snap their ribs. Milkish things.
Cloister rubble and crush.
Break bones for marrow.

It is flaxen hot, this summer.
Thatch our hair into fields,
we lay.
Parch and pucker.

How the heather goes up.
Seed to whisper, to flame
to uncontrollable blaze.
Rage is a bruise or a graze.

Gut the foetus of a fig.
Wasp-sting and swallow.
Our samplers are saturated,
beaded with pomegranate seeds.

We skin hares for their eyes
and feet. Honest blood on our chins,
we run.
The love is violet strong.

We writhe in the dirt. Germinate.
Beg for the burs of each other.
We are becoming and
become.

Burn blaze burn.
Volition and choice,
the fire is honey, is sugar,
disintegrating us to dust.
They can’t tell one from the other.

Ellora Sutton lives in rural Hampshire. She was commended in the 2018 Winchester Poetry Prize and recently won the Young Poets Network’s Carol Ann Duffy challenge.