Zoë Skoulding
Apocryphal
He stretched out his hand as doubt
crumbled in the broken surface;
he left his fingerprints on God
as some kind of evidence if any
were needed. For days they’d hidden
in their skins, the doors locked
and the outer becoming inner, eyes
in place of an eye, a hand
in place of a hand, a foot in place
of a foot, till an eye in his palm
broke as if through glass, the surface
molecules slipping like sand.
He dipped his hand in waves
breaking, splintered by the spires
of palaces he built to be believed,
not seen. In every room a door,
his body passing through as if
a fingerprint could make it real.
October
as time shrinks you hold me
till my shoulder’s
wrenched out of
true migration on a pattern
of light the horizon uncertain
but staying still more so
direction pulses in the bone,
wind shirrs the surface
under skin and feathers
the places farther
apart the necessity of going
from here to there magnetic
fields shimmer the days
shorter the pattern of chemical
change shades the sky
Zoë Skoulding’s most recent collection is The Mirror Trade (Seren 2004). She is currently teaching creative writing at the University of Wales, Bangor, where she is completing her PhD.