A Poem by Fiona Larkin

Who Else is There to Defend Me Now?

But I scattered for your
appetite, my darling
dermatophagoides:
offered up my spoor.

Compositor of dust,
I shed a layer at each turn
and without your mouth-parts —
translucent, assiduous —

would be ankle-high
in scurf, like the ash
that drifts in place of rain
when the land’s on fire.

Speak out for me, little mites,
when the reckoning comes.
Say that I nurtured you
in my oblivious nights.

Fiona Larkin’s pamphlets are Vital Capacity (Broken Sleep Books, 2022) and A Dovetail of Breath (Rack Press, 2020). Highly commended in the Forward Prizes 2019 for the poem ‘Rope of Sand’, she manages innovative projects with Corrupted Poetry.