Kristin Hannaford


Blackberrying At Woodford

On the path three leaves

extend their slight

jagged edge of menace

adjusting to altitude & surviving

bedrock wash.

The tang of pine resin,

gums the palate & this childhood

is a gum booted summer -

jostling for blackberries

our white ice cream buckets full of juice

bursting blue-purple-black-red

the colours of bruises.


Music For Insects

i.

The sunlight moves

circular constellations

across the glass.

A night of watching the galaxy

cycling past

thick webby crosshatches -

spiders claiming a drift of universe.

ii.

Underbelly jazz notes

django django django

are swift fingered riddles.

Small creatures bouncing against

windows, thudding

fragile wings at light.


Prelude to a Machine

I like your hum

you offer prologue & initial remarks

sleek metal skin

cool grey perhaps a bright eyeful of silver

thing of beauty

an idea of synchronized woman & machine

a creative visualization

this could work she breathes

I like the conversations we have

she might say as way of introduction

you defy expectation and offer design

compatibility somebody’s brainchild

intimate adaptations

she likes that in a machine

sketches of a romance

a first attempt

at contact


Isolation Ward

I expect to be here for this foreign disease

I’ve contracted, the simpering flesh -

this recedes as you touch it,

the faint snarl dragging the lip as grimace

pinched under ten-inch stiletto heel.

Not for some out of court dispute

any two-bit judge would dismiss

as ‘waste of official time’.

Dignitaries are not interested in pillows

I’ve arranged and machine stapled to the wall.

Go ahead laugh. You will anyway.

Not a pretty sight, a woman flailing at foam.

Response is cheap. Little return

for invested energies.

Isolate. Turn off the light.

Let her come to grips with her mood

in the darkness, void as opposed to form.

Splintering, humming as she comes

to sense her distraction.