Cameo Marlatt
fog is feathers, guga* down,
white clamour dampened,
distance folded shut.
rock-dark children
lose thought of land,
wash themselves white
to black wingtip:
sharp bodies
cutting trails of air
rise
to paddle dawn-slick sea,
heads yellow-blushed
and dripping.
around them we
slip shelf and
plummet, through
sky and salt,
to break
beak, skull,
on grey water.
*guga: a young gannet
Cameo Marlatt is a Canadian writer living in Scotland, where she is studying towards a Doctorate of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow. Currently, she is working on a collection of poetry and essays on the topic of zoopoetics. She is the co-author of A Drink of One’s Own: Cocktails for Literary Ladies, and her poetry has been published in From Glasgow to Saturn and Lighthouse.