Seven sleeper/thruddle-crump/hazel mouse – Rebecca Gethin

 

Under leaves a furry apple of a one-ounce-mouse

sleeps fast in a cup woven with honeysuckle bark.

gaps darned with moss and grass blades.

 

Before sleep it gorges on rosehips, hawthorn

and blackberries, or hazel nuts, leaving little round holes

in the shells. Before seven months of sleep it must be fat.

 

With cold growing thicker, its metabolism slows to a tick over

inside its core. The furred tail is a scarf wound across its face,

as it curls itself into the pips of its heartbeat.

 

 

unnamed 1Rebecca Gethin lives on Dartmoor in Devon. In 2017 two pamphlets were published: A Sprig of Rowan by Three Drops Press and All the Time in the World by Cinnamon Press who published an earlier collection called A Handful of Water and two novels. She has been a Hawthornden Fellow. In 2018 she jointly won the Coast to Coast Pamphlet competition and has been awarded a writing residency at Brisons Veor. Find more at www.rebeccagethin.wordpress.com.

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The Owl – Sanja Dragojlov

 

Nyctophilia wreathes his senses

while reticent night takes him

in her loving embrace

b.l.i.n.k.i.n.g yellow eyes

burning stars

survey his

complacent kingdom

everything is his

and yet not.

 

Movement catches

his intelligent eyes

his heart shaped face twists, turns

and like a lightning strike

he flies

silent and deadly

he tears, shreds, claws, rips

until mouse dissolves in a

travesty of flesh and fur

for this is

his kingdom.

 

At least

until the silver king

Descends his throne

for a more worthy heiress.

 

sanjapicSanja Dragojlov is a final year Ph.D. student at Cardiff University in EU Politics. She is also the author of Amaranth (Demon City Chronicles), President of the Creative Writing Society at Cardiff University and the Creative Editor for Quench magazine. In her spare time, she also enjoys traveling, reading and learning a new language. She speaks five at the moment which include Serbian, Spanish, Italian, Croatian and French.