RELIEF COMES FROM NATURAL MURDER
Devki Panchmatia
With black eyes
the crab watches
the ribbed end of the coast.
My mind finds wheel-ruts
on the water. This is the doing of sea-things,
their procession in the dark
forms two moving wedges.
White whales are gone with the white ocean.
Inevitable pairs; the sea is scrupulous.
On the beach, we strain for such purity. Here,
only the cruel fever of trash and sand
the blindness of pop-art colour,
bikinis sweating out their pink.
Relief comes from natural murder
when the crab tackles a pink worm
and carries the body to the watery den.
A CAULDRON OF BATS
Black of all shades, a master
of love; that is my sister, and she speaks
in charred nocturnes. Our mouths felted
with chatter-tongue, we receive noise
through noise; that is how a bat tells a story.
You find the whole thing impolite; your stories
rely on the silence of an audience. My brother,
thrown up at the sky
like an umbrella but also like a man,
tells a mad story so globular that for a minute
it is the moon that whistles in his mouth. We are many
against the sky. You bring silence to dissolve the moon.
It’s your turn to tell a story. We’ll keep quiet.
It’s a shame there’s no word for a group of humans.
Devki Panchmatia is a poet based in both London and Edinburgh. Her poetry has been shortlisted for both the Orwell Youth Prize in 2019, and for the 2022 Lewis Edwards Memorial Prize at the University of Edinburgh. She has had poems featured in The Broad, and Interpret Magazine. She recently performed her poetry at the 2022 Hidden Door Arts Festival.