Two Poems by Zoë Brigley

Circle Poem

I also live alone, though
I exist among many,

grind sequins with mortar &

stone, have eaten earth from a yogurt pot.

There are possums in the garden that come carrying
the moon in their paws,
dropping it in the lake, where on occasion we might
see an egret,
still & white & shaped
like a microphone stand. It leans dipping its beak like
a knife-blade into
the circle of water long after moonrise. I live

in a boomtown, where all the time they are shifting

blocks around, never clear where I stand, but
            I flag down cars with the flag of my dress, while
                                                passers-by shout: That looks great on you. I am loose

here: not loose like a dress spun & stretched
            on high heat, but loose like a silver earring when
the clasp won’t quite close & one day it falls in the grass
                                    somewhere. I have lived in
cookie cutters, shiny as chrome on a 1942 Pontiac streamliner;
lived in
       the small white berry
                        of poison sumac; or in the closed
                        anemone exposed out of water, angry in its sac. I am forced
into wire & cables, where
            there exists a solar system but not like our own,
our sun unique,
                        because it is alone without companions.
More common

                        in the night sky are
            two or more stars that orbit each
other, you & I held together by gravity. I live in a telescope
pointing up, where
            some pairs are so close they start
to become one: the spiral disk of the white dwarf reels
in a red giant
& blasts between them brilliant light.

Imprint

Darling, I’ll never know what love is for, until the night
I undress before you. I’ll wear nothing but

my bronze hair & the prettiest ribbons. When the drapes
fall down I’ll be gold in the firelight, luminous

the skin. What if I said that I dreamed you (if
you ever existed)? Imprint, imago behind

my eye: a man, strong & gentle enough to hold a wild
creature like me: vixen, sharp-toothed & sniffing

the air. I will give myself up to your voice if you tell me:
be still. When you put your hands on me, I am still.

Zoë Brigley has three Bloodaxe poetry collections, all PBS Recommendations. She has also published a collection of non-fiction essays, Notes from a Swing State (Parthian), and recently the Broken Sleep chapbook, Aubade After a French Movie. She is editor of 100 Poems to Save the Earth (Seren), with Kristian Evans.