Oblinsky Plateau, Siberia
The mist above the river hangs in hesitation
like the tingle of flies, time bending slowly
in on itself like the spill of the sun as it turns
a blind eye to the chaotic curl of the current,
shoving its swell through the morning rush
of rocks shifting restless beneath the surface:
this river is ready to be ripped from its bed,
stripped of its sheets, dragged by the drift,
its stitches of silt worked loose by the tide
before it can rise, like a splinter of sunlight
whose split is slight then all of a sudden
has swallowed the sky.
Jade Cuttle read literature at University of Cambridge. She has performed on BBC Radio 3 in association with BBC Proms (The Art of Splinters) and is broadcast regularly across BBC Introducing. She has been commissioned for BBC podcasts celebrating Shakespeare’s 400th anniversary and won competitions run by Ledbury Poetry Festival, Foyle Young Poets, BBC Proms, and the Poetry Book Society. She is currently working as Daljit Nagra’s Apprentice Poet-In-Residence at Ilkley Literature Festival and is looking to publish her first pamphlet. If you enjoy her work, you are warmly invited to follow here: www.facebook.com/jadecuttle.
Foxglove Journal 