I am very excited to have my poem, ‘Hoary’, published in the wonderful Tincture Journal. Tincture is a quarterly online magazine full of great quality fiction, essays, interviews, and poetry. And it is only $8 an issue! You can have a look at some of Tincture’s free content here, and please consider buying a copy. It’s one of my favourite reads.
In the meantime, Tincture’s editors, Daniel Young and Stuart Barnes, have kindly given me permission to share my poem with you. I’ve included a short synopsis, which goes some way towards explaining the poem, and perhaps also to explaining a little about myself!
Synopsis
I have a strange fascination for mammoths. These huge, extinct creatures which emerge, often perfectly preserved, from the ice, appear to me to be like some unconscious, repressed memory of the earth, reluctantly resurfacing. As global warming speeds up the melting of the planet’s ice, more and more of these monstrous snow whites, suspended in their frozen graves, are being discovered. Recently, a sixty year old female mammoth, her body still so fresh that her blood was flowing, was unearthed – leading scientists to believe that they may have found enough viable genetic material to produce a clone…
HOARY
Fifteen thousand years I have slumbered
In my icy casket, a hoary
Princess waiting
Not to be kissed, but punctured
By the pick of a prying scientist.
My blood, dark as a fairy tale
Leached insidiously into the Siberian snow,
And my flesh flared red and fresh
Enough to eat.
My lower limbs devoured
By a lusty pack of ancient wolves;
My torso still fantastically intact.
What a prize: my anti-cryogenic
Strength has preserved the code
To conjure my kind back.
Exhumed from earth’s wet memory
(Who dares re-awaken me?)
Entombed in glass and sold for obscene show –
What they may unleash they do not know.