Dents de Lion

But if I could shuck open
my skull and empty it
make a singing bowl of bone with my fingertips
then I would hear my daughter
undressing in the field

and if time were a cup of aspic
I’d rub up against those meaty days
taste her unironed face
stoop in my mute snow tracks
feel sweat in my eyes
everything is summer — humming
as she lets the blur of her knees fall
new cup of hipbone pour into that dry soil
into the jaws of a thousand pissenlits, cankerworts

her chin glows
oh how it glows and she’s begging me not to cut them —
all those suns
she’s drooling intuition

how my jowls mock
now I can watch those teeth breed in her flesh
surrender her to a fragile moon
and then back
back to the bristling stars
with one sweet breath

I have become a mother sword

but I’m not some lusty scimitar
fighting for your soft crown;
I’m just a blunt, rusting thing
more scarred than scarring.
I can’t take you to that safe land –
bury you in a soft chest of milk.
I’m too edged with metal dread,
my pommel caked in doubt.
So I just watch you burn and burn
on your little cot sheet
and pray that you might
fall on me so I can slice us each
to a new place where
flakes of our iron and bone
could fall one by one,
so gently, like snow.

small talk

In the playground a familiar face.
Ask how her summer was.
She rolls her eyes.
Ugh. Small talk.

Which makes we wonder,
as I procure the wet wipes,
would she rather
we talk about
nightmares, Nietzsche, Allah,
creationism versus evolution,
veganism, immigration, taxation,
or 24-week abortions
and socio-economic reasons?
Perhaps we could ponder whether
lethal injection is more ethical
than the firing squad
as we push swings
and wipe snot?

Don’t get me wrong:
there are long, sacred hours
in dim-lit rooms with friends
when I dive in.

But sometimes –
and shoot me –
I’m happy
to chat about the first daffs,
the neighbour’s crumbling wall;
when dad is on his last breath,
his hand in mine,
and we’re gossiping
softly,
grey weather, road closure, what’s for dinner…
mundane,
glorious.

Such small words
holding us
as the last breeze
rustles the thin curtain
by his bed.

delete this definition of jump

the old wind snorts round our lethargy
and the fag ends and
the fragments of us

I’m pocket-heavy with the neat dust
of time and I’ve a gob-full of Ohm

but now and then on this bench with you
I find

my tongue loses its slaver and the
cartwheel and the cigar are still.

Let the June rain believe it’s your mother’s shawl
pouring over your soft throat and your

imperfections
I see you are a nimbus in a blush of rebellion

could this pool of water dissolve
our crust and airs and home-spun fears

here, take my hand and restore it to a lark’s wing
bring that turbulence in your lungs edema of wonder

then, my darling, we’ll delete the definition of jump
and the compounds of water

and gravity will curtsy with her rising silk
until the fourth dimension roars with laughter or relief

as our feet near the water’s
edge and we —

Alexandra Price has worked as a book critic, journalist, ghost-writer, and as a mentor for young offenders. Her poetry has been shortlisted for a number of competitions and has been published in The Friday Poem, The Amphibian, and Riverstone Literary Journal.