Rachel Sills
TOP LASSES
but I do like a soft texture set against air
I don’t like blue/brown combinations
but I do like the interruption of candy-stripes in figurative representations of girlhood
I don’t like artificially-sharpened focus on photographs
but I do like the possibility implied by nuanced shadows
save for this
Look Tiana, it matches your dolly. Look Tiana, the pen-study of a man-made spiral screw. Look Lezline, at the light fading over Billinge. Look Lezline, in the turquoise of the plunge pool. Look Blod, look at the vowels separated by multiple bracket sets. Look Blod, the secondary image of a man-made spiral staircase. Look Madison, the buttresses gold in this sunset. Look Madison, the people descending the staircase. Look Mona Lisa, the long-term effects of your bullying. Look Mona Lisa, the pen-study of a natural conch shell. Look Caro, at the heads of the fiddles. Look Caro, like ferns. Look Shanay, at the fat wallet of your heart. Look Shanay, the light shatters over the sea. Look, Vicky, beyond the vista of low expectations. Look, Vicky, the common letter strings with multiple pronunciations
I’m alive to the aleatory possibilities of dese words.
I cough.
I’m tough.
I do dis dough.
The doughy mass of my stomach now, after three children now
A secondary image of a man-made spiral staircase
A nude descending it
The doughy mass of her stomach
A pen-study of a photograph of a maiden fern
My maidenhair
Unfurl it over the doughy mass of my stomach now
Let down my hair
The secondary study of a man-made spiral
My “looks” are “fading”
YELLOW FEELS
flickering dialectical constructivism for a pound:
where the magpie chaffs I lie
& sinking in buttercups I find my lawn
summer eve in latent perfume centre
with fillips o’buddleia of rich purple
not the wan kind reaching out to sickly butterflies
but total immersion in a kind of velvet depth suggesting engorgement.
Cloudation of thoughts or at least enigmas.
I track them as I’d track dusk-bats, through sound
& feet becoming increasing dew-soaked across the darkened field
Before harken I hold a man’s hand
with slick-fingered twinery & this transubstantiates to day/night
leafings, where I don’t remember taking the hand but have sense-memory
of entwined fingers & the meaning of this.
Tongue larch
three-day wilted stuff lies abed. And I’m cold. And remember your mouth also shy in total repetition upon lips. Sure, I can sway my hips if you like, in that velvet skirt, for you to gently fingertip. I have forgotten some of the words. Flown like moths or mouths
a faint nudging wasp scooters low over the lawn in a kind of hamstrung lethargy
the sun withdraws behind its fan
the sun wears a velvet ribbon as a choker with the bow trailing down its exposed back
a real woman in a lace cap looks on from the piano stool.
Tonkarisation of fine metalwork
filigree thoughts leaving a kind of fine mental imprint
it oxidized later to that beautiful muted green
wherein greens mutate to mustards along the yellow spectrum
the sun holds an egg in its hand, possibly a plover’s egg
& heat fractures as light
which falls long & slanted at this hour
when I carry my books on a tray
warmth slides across the shoulders, shawling their caps
shielding their cups & blades via filtered light
nine of particles cohering round the centre of a garden swing. Weatherworn ropes. There’s this creaking & an arcing trajectory. Crushed petals for perfume where rubbing each plucked petal to pulp & vein against the back of the wrist becomes a release. I will take that as a yes. Individual florets plucked from lacecap hydrangea strangely heraldic in a pointed foliate way. I would take the name daisy as I open to the sun. The extracted juice is foul, yeah. There is a high iron content: because
lawn-flowers are crushed underfoot in a silly waste of exquisite
this cowed & bending is the essence of feminine
but they secretly spring back up
stank of ovaries under the trellis-shadow
two real women working side-by-side to make a shared perfume
I can’t remember the exact moment of the left hand being taken
simply the meaning
we got a cab but my make-up ran, being fitter than me
niblets or hung pinecones
compound madrigals against the lowering sun
in bird falsetto
apple maps
Copyright © Rachel Sills 2017
Rachel Sills is the author of two chapbooks,Two Hundred Houses (Knives Forks and Spoons Press) and Endless/Nameless, co-written with Richard Barrett (Red Ceilings Press). Recent work has appeared in Blackbox Manifold, Shearsman Magazine and Datableed. She is a co-organiser of the Manchester-based reading series, Peter Barlow's Cigarette.