Zoë Skoulding
VENDÉMIAIRE
Décade 1
1. Raisin Grape
the city trickles down your throat in blood
swallowed days swallow you crushed
you leave your trace in the season mutating
what state is not
a state of change stand up
2. Safran Saffron
crushed yellow stains
your fingers from stamen
to sunset to gold
in this struggle the trace of
a head or a planet turning
3. Châtaignes Chestnut
after the summer comes a glut
of chestnuts blackened in fire
erupting a shell cracks
between thumb and finger
if it looks like a brain eat it
4. Colchique Autumn Crocus
a crack in the bulb a clean start
and late green light spring on repeat
goes naked and leafless
round and round and
falling into storms we hold together
5. Cheval Horse
there came a white horse
or was it a grey pony
lost in its own name
or the edge of a wave
repeating nothing
6. Balsamine Touch-me-not balsam
scatter wide in the insurgency
quick in the hand
a seedpod
explodes nothingness
in the human system of a garden
7. Carrottes Carrots
scrape earth from skin
where bright sugar
seeps through that other
taste of what's come up
from underneath
8. Amaranthe Amaranth
this red means nothing
if you've forgotten hunger
a handful of seeds spitting in the pan
after all the burnings
where love lies bleeding
9. Panais Parsnip
at root is an idea you can't know
in the dark only taste is it sweet
how do you tell
what should have been buried
and what keeps what must keep pushing back
10. Cuve Vat
while tomorrow's wine is sleeping
tap out yesterday's rhythm
that tomorrow no longer believes
in which every tomorrow
is better than today
Décade 2
11. Pommes de Terre Potatoes
scrabble under the skin of earth
for the starch pearl mud apple and ask
what future lies under the skin
of the seasons you can still decipher
or the darknesses you can still count
12. Immortelle Strawflower
you can still shine yellow
dry to a papery thinness
not the flower but the dead
shape of its idea still gleaming
indestructible
13. Potiron Squash
a gouged out gourd a sunset
what were you dreaming of
coming and going a movement
accomplished at sixes and sevens
return sunrise
14. Réséda Mignonette
belief in sky is what holds it up
roots hidden deep in the sun
only heady scent escapes the fight
between the yellow you once knew
in these ragged petals
15. Âne Donkey
ears tuned forwards a pull on a back hoof
a footing lost and found
always change
moving through fur and lashes
a smoking muzzle
16. Belle de nuit Marvel of Peru
who has your attention and what's it worth
in the stretched-out hours
she comes in colours
steps into night's movement
where darkness is increased by one
17. Citrouille Pumpkin
time to turn into another
sunset globe hold steady
after all what do I know about
where this carriage is heading
with its windows all on fire
18. Sarrazin Buckwheat
even grain doesn't escape otherness
a dark seed an unstable element
the time doesn't come
as if arriving from somewhere else
you move and it's what you are
19. Tournesol Sunflower
roll a ring of flame against the sky
as earth turns on a point of light
this uncertain hope
takes more than one
blazing head
20. Pressoir Wine-Press
that was god's blood in the winepress then printers' ink
pressed down in the word made flesh
more blood in the economy
won't save anyone
it's time for leverage
Décade 3
21. Chanvre Hemp
laid out in dew where colonies of mould
advance in flecks on steel-grey fibre
cleaning and brightening
this work of loss not us
a rope against the troubles
22. Pêches Peaches
the day you're dreaming of is already here
a bloom of down settles on the news
as chlorophyll degrades and love
costs nothing as it ripens
a darker pigmentation coming through
23. Navets Turnip
in place of a planet
turning purple
red or greenish glazed
she remembered turnips
the room grew smaller
24. Amarillis Amaryllis
what's the point of shepherding
lost names Amaryllis
a tangle in the air
all bitterness and glitter
gaudy bloom
25. Boeuf Steer
lurches at the grid
a flank scored into
cuts of gendered meat he doesn't know
his weight shifts tremulous
in grass and muscle hot breath
26. Aubergine Aubergine
yes but can you read what it says
not the pale flesh
tracing round the seed like faint letters
but the tissues of knowledge
not your own
27. Piment Chili Pepper
who or what inflicts it
pain is red
is too simple a diagnosis
for the edge of feeling you can't reach
between kiss and pepper spray
28. Tomate Tomato
translation ripples a supply chain
from wolf peach to golden apple
water grows fat on capital
I say truncation of ACC synthase
you say endless summer
29. Orge Barley
whose head did no thinking
a scarecrow marks a human boundary
where the birds came and the mice
resigned to his fate
roughed up in wind
30. Tonneau Barrel
lignin breakdown to vanilla
oak on the tongue where trees
are the shape of waiting
in seepage of oxygen this red darkens
a forest speaks in your mouth
Copyright © Zoë Skoulding 2017
Zoë Skoulding's most recent collections are Teint: For the Bièvre (Hafan Books, 2016) and The Museum of Disappearing Sounds (Seren, 2013). She is Reader in Creative Writing at Bangor University and lives on Anglesey. Her piece here is part of a longer work, A Revolutionary Calendar.