Mai Wallace

La Lune

In a tumble of luminescence
You spill from the sky as though
Made of nacre – crystalline crescents
That ribbon from La Lune.

Like a phantom, you opalesce against the late-night,
Like a voyeur, you prowl-
Through the rose sense of past and night-frosted glass,
We play peek-a-boo until I lose sight of you.

Before I lose you to the landscape you scurry,
Outshining the fractals if stars- outing your guise.
Before I lose you to the dawning of sunlight you glower,
You wane, you wither, you die.

 

Among The Bluebells

Bury me among the bluebells
that blossomed in the spring
and frayed in autumn winds,
and died at the hands of winter.

Nothing above, nothing below
but the branches that break beneath the feet
like brittle teeth and withering bones
and fragile will that the mind beat weak.

Fields of violets bloom in bruises
along kneecaps and shins and thighs too thick
that rot to sticks. Ghosting marks about
veins that streamed, trickled, and dried out.

The body that once played among the flowers now lay
burned out and decayed; it sleeps but doesn’t dream
in ashes, on a bed of bluebells,
finally at peace.

Mai Wallace is an eighteen year old writer who fell in love with words and other worlds as a means of escapism. She is based in Norfolk, UK, constantly inspired by the natural world around her, and terrified of coming off as pretentious.

Mai Wallace

La Lune

In a tumble of luminescence
You spill from the sky as though
Made of nacre – crystalline crescents
That ribbon from La Lune.

Like a phantom, you opalesce against the late-night,
Like a voyeur, you prowl-
Through the rose sense of past and night-frosted glass,
We play peek-a-boo until I lose sight of you.

Before I lose you to the landscape you scurry,
Outshining the fractals if stars- outing your guise.
Before I lose you to the dawning of sunlight you glower,
You wane, you wither, you die.

 

Among The Bluebells

Bury me among the bluebells
that blossomed in the spring
and frayed in autumn winds,
and died at the hands of winter.

Nothing above, nothing below
but the branches that break beneath the feet
like brittle teeth and withering bones
and fragile will that the mind beat weak.

Fields of violets bloom in bruises
along kneecaps and shins and thighs too thick
that rot to sticks. Ghosting marks about
veins that streamed, trickled, and dried out.

The body that once played among the flowers now lay
burned out and decayed; it sleeps but doesn’t dream
in ashes, on a bed of bluebells,
finally at peace.

Mai Wallace is an eighteen year old writer who fell in love with words and other worlds as a means of escapism. She is based in Norfolk, UK, constantly inspired by the natural world around her, and terrified of coming off as pretentious.

Jessica Brown

Lemon

A man threw a lemon into the air
And caught it up, on a February afternoon.
It was unseasonable: he didn’t care.
The air smelled of flowers and the day-wrong moon –
Or the woman-in-front’s expensive scent:
It was all one.
There was a brightness to the hour
That he had not seen or meant
When he’d prayed for sun beneath his morning shower.
The man sheathed the lemon in his pocket and went.

Jessica Brown is a 22-year-old, London-born poet, teacher and recent Oxford graduate. Her poetry has been shortlisted for the Bloodaxe Archive Challenge and she won second prize in the Barnet Youth Poetry Competition. Her work has also been published in various magazines including The Mays anthology, the Young Writers’ anthology, the Oxford Review of Books and Better Than Starbucks. Jessica has been writing poetry since she was five or six, having hailed from a long line of verse-addicted English teachers.