Natalie Crick, from the UK, has poetry published or forthcoming in a range of journals and magazines including Ink in Thirds, The Penwood Review, Interpreters House, The Chiron Review and Rust and Moth. This year her poem, ‘Sunday School’ was nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
Let It Rain
Trees are like songs
In the air, sighing,
A green blush
To evening sky.
Raindrops on the windows
Are already starting to melt.
The mourning dove
Coos lost love.
I am a held breath,
Face turned to beaten sky,
Dark and purpled.
I am the bowl.
I am the collector.
Let it rain
Liquid solitude,
Translucent at dusk.
Autumnal Gems
Branches shudder in growth.
Roots twist and suck.
The ground dapples.
Shoots rise:
Soft, lush,
Dripping,
A pulsing thing
Exposed to wind,
Exhaled into open sky,
Forgotten, ghosted.
Russet leaves catch the light
Open mouthed as infants
High on sugar,
Passing out,
Their glutinous gems
A promiscuous showering of treats.
Ghost
Night is an open mouth.
Her touch minnows the water,
Whispers leaves as if
Through lace to some
Forbidden ear,
Combs my hair with glassy fingers,
A memory of her breath
Heard beneath the door,
The warmth apparent
That haunts her absent lungs.
Ghosts are there to see by.
You remember.
Swan
I scrub mouse blood from the floorboards
Imagining ice,
Imagining throats.
The dead stay dead.
A necked Swan
Sits disgraced,
The pale bone poking through, a
Sword rising from a lake
Sharp and still sheathed.
The bone is so white
I could have carved
It from wax,
Soft as bees,
A candle without a flame.
Forever Winter, the sky
Looks cold, pink as a clot
In the mouth
When the lights go out.
Swiss Sunshine
Today sky’s clouds
Are God’s fingers.
Sun scrapes across Winter
In it’s numb chariot,
Blushing to a fervor,
Garmentless,
Blood thrumming through it’s acres
Flaming, fruit,
Rendered opaque,
Purpling to magenta.
Each day the sun fashions a perfect death,
Pumpkin moon spiked, luminescent.
in parentheses 
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