Photo: Bog Sky in the City by Stephanie Robinson

The bog-sky
Reflected in innumerable small pools,
Into which the fingers of mossy stars seep,
While bog-blankets creep,
Toward dim outlines,
On the horizon.
A thousand moons undulate,
Verdant shadows spectate.

In this damp air sound travels.
But the sky is so peaceful it deafens.
Midnight-tinged amethyst abyss
beckons.
A sky so deeply lilac as to be afire.
The urge to scream,
how definitively serene
and embracing
this bog-sky is.
This, home is.

Disrupted.
A heel through the face of the moon.
A people that never existed,
Because people only exist,
Where there are roads.

Burning torches,
The paintbrushes dipped into the wrong water,
Now irreversibly charcoal smoke tainting
The colour of the firmament.
Town-skies can never be lilac, can never be loud,

Towns don’t acknowledge.

After this day,
Not a glance for the sky, subdued,
Huddling, in the corner of the room.

Arrows embroider.
Stitch me into the seam of the earth.
Bog smothered, mud mothered,
Draw down violent sleep,
Century deep.
No sound from the bell that tolls
From the Otherworld.
Only the dread resonates.
Heralds a speck, a spore…
Inoculates nocturnal substrate.

Heartbeat slows.
Welcome weight, sounds abate.
Preserved in vacuum shackled cloying caress.
Behemoth sentience stirs, observes.

Primal machinations turn,
Judgements pass; inscrutable law,
Extends, attempts accursed salvation,
Yawns maternal apex maw,
Draws delicate mortal,
Limb by limb
across
Liminal portal.

Blind impetus impotent.
Imposing mutual benefit,
Carves biological niche from flesh,
Without finesse.

The promise of Anastomosis*,
Is not this yet.
But as contact and a choice are made,
As enzymes dismiss the myth of distinction,
So fruiting bodies are furnished
With a mouth.

Symbiosis without precedence,
Yet in isolation, death.
Co-operation compelled
By a vital quality offered each;
For the human, endurance,
For the mycelium, speech…

Semiosis; an action or process involving the establishment of a relationship between a sign, and its object and meaning.

Adaptive murmuring Semiosis.
Relevance is relative;
Amidst an anchorless paradigm
Logic, with no gravity, turns over and over.

A sign is-
Not all communication is language.
A susurrus of impressions press,
Impress upon, scorch the senses, in the absence,
Of salience.

Urgent impulse, signals flicker,
Biological imperatives bicker,
Spasm, roll eyes, stretch strain.
There could be pain,
But signals won’t connect,
Can’t affect.

A sign cannot function until-

Who defines relevance in the Umwelt?
Perception deaf if not significance felt.
What currency used in conceptual trade?
Signs meaningless until meaning made.

Adaptive murmuring Semiosis;
Arise multitudinous echoes,
Eons lapse, galaxies strobe,
As bridging cross-cognition
Sentience slogs.
A litany of stimuli and response.
Until each can deduce,
Each sign has use,
and at last…
a truce.

Finally arriving, in the body always inhabited.
The tumult of information has ceased,
In its wake, uncanny peace.

Gases mingle, vapours twist,
Hybrid fingertips twitch.
Emerge to scratch existential itch.

Awareness permeates.
Fills the chasms between head and heart.
Asking
How many times was shock mistaken?
Forgiveness or permission, taken?
Gently drawing attention,
To the meaning of each sensation.
Only now realising
The utility of desire,
The utility of ire.

Teeth like acid.
Tear holes in the validity of imposed reality,
Eat the bedrock to which misconception clings.
The antidote to misinterpretation,
To become so alien,
That one requires closer consideration.

Or, with Changeling gifts,
Move amongst them,
Ready.

Awareness permeates.
Fills the chasms between head and heart.
Asking

Who am I now? Are there others, like me?

Echoes reverberate.
Following roots and rumours,
Earthly filaments encounter
Lichenous likeness.
In comforting darkness,
A balm.

A bitter aftertaste.
Of wilt and wither.
Molecules whisper
Chemical laments,
For aberrant nutrients.
Mutually enforcing,
Mutually exhausting;

Identity, and reason for being.

Purpose, with no gravity,
Turns over and over,
Until
Drawn to a North
No compass can point to,
Along a path,
No maps can show,
Something stirs.

Resolves itself.
Absolves itself.

Begins.

A cursory glance could never glean,
The magnitude of altered being,
Now clawing the muck, in every cell imbibed…

A curse that sets you free.

*In mycology, anastomosis is the process of fusion between branches of the same or different hyphae to form an interconnected network, which is the foundation of the fungal colony (mycelium).

I love you I said
And he said nothing
And I know this about myself
That I have so much love
That where I see a vacuum of it
I can always find some to pour in and fill the space.
But this singularity that has opened up

inside of him is yawning wide

I love you I said
And he said nothing
As I tried to fill that

hollowness with that love

As I filled it with tears
After all these years
I still love you I said

And he said Nothing

He just sat there like a stone
With no cracks
To help to try and prize him open
With no breath inside
No oxygen to ignite
Not even a tiny spark
And begin to light up

what was there before

 Because it was

There

Before

Photograph by Polly Alexandra

Photograph by Polly Alexandra

How she became a Tour De Force

When the Supreme Court ruled segregated schools unconstitutional in 1954. When the national NAACP office started to focus on Arkansas’ schools, they chose Bates to plan the strategy and she became the driving force in enrolling black students into all white schools.

She organised the Little Rock Nine: choosing nine students in 1957 to integrate Central High School in Little Rock. She worked tirelessly to ensure they were protected from violent crowds. She also advised the group becoming their mentor and even joined the school’s parent organisation.

She picked them up in the mornings and drove them to school and picked them up from school at the end of each day.

She refused to accept the all white schools attempts to deny them and other blacks entry. Bates used her newspaper to publicise the schools who didn’t follow the federal mandate and highlighted their prejudices.

We hope that our sharing of Daisy Bates’ legacy, offers Magical Women readers and participants, contributors and allies hope, that you can grow here, you can find empowering and relaxed spaces to speak, to share and to grow, where you can attend to your art and writing practice without fear of being silenced, excluded, corrected or shut down.

Here, you are offered an environment where you can think for yourself as yourself.

Magical Women’s mission is to remove the risk found in mainstream systems, structures and neurotypical understanding around “equality and diversity” offering instead an empowering space because you are empowering it, and we are empowered by you.

We need more Daisy Bates’ and more black Magical Women.

Please go to ‘About Womoon’ on our website to read about our paid call outs for poetry and opinion pieces that centre around the themes “Rage” and “Persist”.

We need your voices. We need to grow. Please contact us. (info [at] magicalwomen.co.uk)