Stuart Barnes and Michele Seminara

(1)^†

The little thickets were the only place to get to.

The absence of the sea

Set a white, extravagant quiet.

I awaited the great beauty of the gorse—

Simmering, perfumed,

Ringing the snares with its unction.

It was intent, like torture.

Its dead black spikes

Made a hole in nothing.

And its flowers tasted like vacancy.

(2)^††

It was an ancient twist of the tripwire set me bleeding.

Clamped in the copper gleam of a human contrivance

I wait, aghast, as an indolent fly

Trails the blade-edge of our drama.

‘Murderer!’ I cry, but my words do not

Translate beyond a tortured weeping.

Doomed to the Sunday stew-pot

I lie locked as you penetrate the gorse

Your blunt fingers riving snare after snare

From the innocent land, your unworldly

Exploration driving you to desecrate

The sanctity of this eyrie hollow—

Where my simmering entrails come fresh

Into your dybbuk hands.

†a remix of Sylvia Plath’s ‘The Rabbit Catcher’ by Stuart Barnes
††a remix of Ted Hughes’s ‘The Rabbit Catcher’ by Michele Seminara

Stuart Barnes’s writing has appeared in a wide variety of publications. He is poetry editor of Tincture Journal and Verity La. In 2014 he co-judged the ACT Publishing Awards’ poetry category and his manuscript Blacking Out and other poems was named Runner-up for the Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize. Twitter @StuartABarnes, Tumblr http://stuartabarnes.tumblr.com/

Michele Seminara is a poet and yoga teacher from Sydney. Her writing has appeared in publications such as Bluepepper, Tincture Journal, Regime and Seizure. She is also the managing editor of creative arts journal Verity La. She blogs at http://micheleseminara.wordpress.com/ and is on twitter @SeminaraMichele