‘Exeunt’ by Melanie Marshall
Day One
From nowhere a displaced,
Cloven, braced in the shallows
Marmite eyes unanswered
He vaults over the ford
Interrupted.
Day Three
A puppet under the hedge
Tiny antlers once sculpted of bone, cartilage, fibrous tissue, skin, nerves, vessels.
Uncalled-for on grass
verge of death
Eye: quill in a bloodwell
Back end: velour peeled
already meat for something…
Day Seven
…Something has dragged it without ceremony into the road
Tractor or fox
Pelt withered into rawhide,
Cardinal trails.
Day Ten
Molten grey seeps
Bowels plunge inside the casket of ribs
Tusks bared, grimace-gummed.
Day Twelve
Deboned, spine and pelvis, strewn on local tarmac
Red kite torpedoes for carrion
The maggots plough through this
corset of venison.
Nerve-eaten endings
Latent just-carcass
Sun-drying, imprinting its wet negative on the ground. Nothing now but a
Polaroid of pain.
Melanie Marshall is a freelance editor who lives near a Neolithic long barrow in Somerset, with her husband, son, daughter and two cats. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from UEA and a BA in English Literature from Cardiff University, has had poems and short stories published by The Moth, Momaya, Pen & Inc Press, The Ghastling and Prole Books, and her novel Noir Gris was longlisted for the Mslexia Prize.
Main photo by John Lavin