Electra Dreams of the Last Day

One day remains. Odd as a child in a foxed mirror, Electra rides towards the ruined church. Like kisses on a glass page tossed promises and curses stream behind her, leaving a trail of handmade offerings. She is coming to the wedding of the Bride-with-the-Deceitful-Mouth, knowing that whatever is yet to be wrecked will be wrecked in the way of all flesh. For doesn't everything always, even in this marriage proposal, still so exciting, feel the urge to be something else. She has gathered up the scattered remains of our culture: a plastic doll's head, frost ferns on a window pane, curiously intact Victoriana, a knife with its chipped blade. As pitiless and as unflinching as a God, she rides upon her frost lion, trying to tempt the hidden husband from his den. The crescent moon hangs above her shining like hammered tin, a green mouth turning pink, all in reverse. A mystery and a sudden shower of light. One tear streams backwards up her face. Turning the palm of her hand she maps a series of glorious exits and entrances: lifelines; lovelines. The bride opens the door of herself and lets her love to be pass through her, Electra stumbles in with her gifts from the bay, and the improbable husband arrives a moment too late, like a retold joke, and goes to her, with his ring, since he knows no better.

The copyright of this post belongs to Claire Steele

Rafael Finds Unexpected Opulence

Early evening come in the blink of an eye, as the sun passes over Rafael's shoulder and illuminates the map. There'll be treasure here, he knows it. Incomings and outgoings, losses and gains. The ltitle latch on the gate clicks shut behind him. How much change will he see, when he shoulders open the door to this cottage on the cliffs he calls his castle? He has returned, as he knew he must, knowing all manner of love and its cargo of grief. He has heard that a broken heart is an open heart.
When he enters the house, there she is, at the kitchen table. What price his soul? She is reading from one of the books, turning its yellow pages in the sun's borrowed gold. Under her breath she is calculating his heart's ransom. All these things he thought he could not live without. He is acutely aware of the cliff edge behind him, through the open door. Don't bet more than you can afford to lose, his brain-chatter warns him. Have you a penny to pay the ferry? When the time comes to count the cost will you still be arguing about who found this fortune or will you cease to care. A cacophony, or a symphony in his head. Or perhaps just the brass section warming up. When the pounds aren't taking care of themselves he is in a state of febrile excitement. He has come to get what he wanted and something else he didn't expect. A jar of pickled onions on the window ledge glows like a jar of captured moons.
At last she looks at him and all the questions subside. He had wondered what she'd make of him, when she saw him with his broken fingernails and his crock of fool's gold. And now, before her, he sees she loves him, simply, broken as he is. She has the coins to redeem all his sins.

The copyright of this post belongs to Claire Steele

It Begins

It begins with all the perfumes that pass for summer in his more peaceful years: diesel rising off the roads, figs going over in their bowl, synthetic coconut from my warm skin. In the garden the upturned bowls of the peonies fill with rain, which falls with the necessary urgency. From my vantage point in the treehouse I watch how under the wide dark sky the garden forms itself into a bowl of light. From his chair on the porch he can hear me pulling the great powerful note from the Tibetan singing bowl until the Gods are thoroughly summoned and all world is choir. Rapture, rather.
I suppose we'd sometimes argue. In the operatic way. But I cannot recall what we said. Our words fall still among the other sounds. He wears a little silver bell so that wherever he is in his dark hours, I can find him. We keep inventing precious times together. Behind him, on the white shelf are three shiny black bowls each with a silver sign - the name of a God, the breath  of creation, a widow's prayer. We are not permitted to touch these bowls. We must pass them by, he says, dipping his fingers int the water. And as soon as he is gone indoors, I do, touch each of them in quick succession. And just this once, the familiar world averts its gaze and will not notice. And this is how it begins.

So Green

So green it was cast aside, thrown to some minor tilt in the wind's inflection. Though they searched the forest lines, those young girls walking in an afternoon light, it was not to be found, maybe never to be found again. So green, it tucked itself among the small pears of your unripe dream, shivered in the frostbitten air. The young girls breathed out their souls, cold and radiant, clouds of broken longitude. But even there, it could not be found.
So green, its marks were antique, though they looked freshly made, a bit smudged perhaps, like the rain-merged message-in-a-bottle sea stained script of your love letters to me. The message illegible now, something starry-blurry, something wept over. So green the distance from it to us is as natural as the distance between my writs and my thumb. Imagine that! That what we longed for was there all along, at our fingertips. Something in my heart steps on a trip wire, a line so teetering green it feels like a line drawn freehand by a considerate child, a thumb in her rosy mouth. The wire dips in the Methodist wind. A pear falls from its branch with a soft thud. My brow is mapped with the lines of latitude and longing that characterise what I will do for you and how far I will go.
At this my mother's soul flies in through a tear in the atmosphere. Chagall turns over in his bed. blink if you believe me. The forest is standing in green italic against the horizon. So green, if love is still beating her soft drum let's invite her in.

The copyright of this post belongs to Claire Steele

F is for February

My wild King, we are in the odd month out. Carrion birds march on the armour of the dead. I am iron turned rust; I am cedar turned charcoal. I try to divine water, anything lively in this dry land.
 Jokers are always wild, you whisper, and press the card into my palm, lined and creased with use. A is for adoration. You are my King and I am at your service. All these days I spend with you, working for the months yet to come, a time I cannot even dream of. There are twenty eight days in a leap year you say. That's wrong of course, the month unravelling itself again. B is for battered, by rains Be careful what you wish for. I grow morbid and morose. The bottom of the hole fills up so soon your Majesty. I empty your pot and watch the gold flowing around in circles.
C is for the crowned tweet bird who lands on your shoulder and pecks the worms from your ear. The sulky crows lever themselves into the storm-promised sky. I turn up the Ace of Hearts so often it is humiliating. D is for the dancers, flickering their eyes, scattering rice and puja flowers before us. They show us the palms of their hands and I look to you in fear in case you can read them as clearly as I do.
E is for the earth, root-rodded, and for energy. Your eyes light up my Lord. We are signing to each other across the abyss. Excepting envy, I begin to think we will manage this.
F is forever. Let us take refuge there. It won't be long now.

The copyright of this post belongs to Claire Steele

Alice

Oh keep the dog of days far hence, we prayed then bitterly to the God of smashed up things. Alice had her wand and her luminous wings fashioned from chicken feathers and bones washed white. We hid in all the improbable places of childhood: spiral stone staircases that ended abruptly in stone walls; underneath the carparks and the canal bridges, in derelict lunatic asylums still creaking with their ghosts. And the days were ridged with magical and mundane treasures. We pushed open a door to see a sheep's spine turning on a string. In the midden behind the playground we unearthed a trove of soul secrets, unlit but still beating, giving off the must of smoked aubergine. Before long Alice would grow desperate. Tell me a secret, she would plead, something that nobody knows, and then another, and then another.
But in spite of our prayers time moved itself around its series of clocks, exerted its miraculous propensity to age us. We looked in mirrors just to catch a sight of our fascinatingly older selves. On the walk home, the night grew cold, and flapped around us like a freshly ripped coat. Wind wide enough to wrap a fairy in, Alice murmured, yawning, and then lay, still as a saint upon the flat wall outside the pub, listening to the warrior drunks singing their soft arias. Stretching her arms to measure the sky she asserted the randomly improving values of lemons and told me of her dreams. And we must have held each other then, as we are doing now.
And here we are, still praying to the Gods of all smashed things to mend us, spare us, and keep us. And still we pray: oh keep the dogs of day far hence.

The copyright of this post belongs to Claire Steele

Wild

The beast in fur is in the shadows, testing the light for truth. He wonders if his hands are ludicrous, as they sift through the soil, flake the rotting wood, startle the beetles into movement. He relies on his primeval instincts; he is a shiver looking for a spine to run up. The moon is a bodged circle of light above the trees. Nothing is advantaged beneath it.
There is something radiant about the beast tonight, a salt, or mineral glow, from crashing seas to wild moors: something tremendous, like the wild kiss of a bride.
He is looking for her, drawing her towards him with some novel magic. He senses her resistance, her tantrums, screams and shouts, as he conjures her up. She is mustard on his tongue, brandy in his blood. She is a lost thing biding her time for being found: the moment of her exposure is unravelling. Soon he will offer her his fierce kiss.