Emissary

By Iain Britton

send me to the town’s

bruised core

to the late-night girls
caught out by the early sun

an implosion of grace

and the last owl          tunnels home

the first magnolia opens

let me find

alternative routes        lived-in dioramas
souls dyed in red iridescence

fag-ends attached to the mouths of brothers and sisters

like a born prodigal       I walk

through kaleidoscopic patterns
that bedazzle paths

that keep halving         quartering

curled up in my hand              a message

stains and smells
won’t rub off

persons unknown        read to me

amputations of sagas washed up on a beach

Oystercatcher Press published Iain Britton’s third poetry collection in 2009; Kilmog Press her 4th in 2010. The Red Ceilings Press published an ebook Ten Poems last year and an Argotist Ebook Songlines has come online this year and a pamphlet from Like This Press has just been published. Beard of Bees (US) has a chapbook of mine now online. Forthcoming poems in Peter Hughes’ Sea Pie: a Shearsman Anthology of Oystercatcher Poetry, plus a collection with Department Press in 2013.