Sleeplessness gives way to the dreamy promise of luscious fruits, beautiful bodies and fantastical lands in Elodie Rose Barnes’ poetry, inspired, in part, by Leonora Carrington and H. D.
Insomnia
“This is a love letter to a nightmare” – Leonora Carrington.
She doesn’t sleep
because she rests on her right side and the city,
underneath her, rests on its left. Its song
keeps her awake. Drowning her
like the siren call of the sea.
She doesn’t sleep
because words that will never be spoken
flood her mind in hot waves, taking advantage
of the dark. All life
can only be seen clearly in the dark.
She doesn’t sleep
because she lies awake sculpting the words
into boats, tiny and majestic
as they carry her downriver, lost one by one
like tears in the rain. She never sees the sea.
She doesn’t sleep
because in dreams she can follow the homeless,
the displaced; all those things she has cast
aside. Her dreams are their only home,
but when she tries to touch they are shadow.
She doesn’t sleep.
She stays awake to greet the carrion crow that hovers between her
and the dawn.
Lullaby
Go to sleep and dream
in night-jasmine
white petals that cool
these molten desert sands
– your eyes –
into waves that rock you.
A wide Sargasso sea
of ripples and blooms,
your body swaying
like a candle flame.
Follow the circle of the tide
– your footsteps –
and you will meet yourself on that day
when sea salt stung
our lips instead of rain.
Dream in feasts
of spiced peaches; forget the taste
of love’s bitter herbs.
Wake, or don’t wake.
My only reality – but who can ever say
what is real?
Images
After H.D.
There were no poems written
that day.
That is, there was poetry,
but nothing became of it.
Shallow light crumbled through leaves,
falling on skin like pollen,
honey-gold
perfumed.
I was Eurydice freed
from the underworld, a myth rewritten.
That is, it was rewritten,
but only by us.
Spring curled itself
around our senses, our combined shadows
longer than one alone, the blackbird –
out of all the blackbirds – the only one
who sang.
Why was dusk so slow
with us? I wanted the stars
for a poem.
That is, you had poetry on your skin,
but no poems were written.
Rain came softly instead,
and I watched the words
wash away.
“…We don’t know each other very well yet. We simply meet by accident in the woods…sometimes it grows dark and my ecstasy becomes so great…Sometimes I write a poem.
You might think that the light was very shallow in this forest…But the light is very full and rich. The light is very warm. The light has a whole, crumbling feeling about it…the light seems to dust your fingers but does not really.” — from ‘Paint It Today’.
About Elodie Rose Barnes
Elodie Barnes is a writer of poetry, essays, short fiction, and book reviews. Her work appears regularly in online and print journals, and has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. She splits her time between England, France, and Spain (never speaking the right language in the right country), and is working on collections of poetry and hybrid essays. Follow Elodie on Twitter @BarnesElodie
These poems were commissioned under our theme, Night / Shift
For Night / Shift, we at Lucy Writers want to close our eyes to the rituals of the day and open them wide to the possibilities, sites, moves, sounds and forms visible only by night. Using Leonora Carrington’s work (see image above) as an entrance into this broad theme, we welcome writing – reviews, features, essays, creative non-fiction, (flash) fiction, poetry – and art work that explores night and its multiple shifts, liberating and otherwise, for womxn in particular.
Is night, as Carrington suggests, a feminine and feminist zone in itself, one which subverts daily codifications and rethinks day’s conditions? Or is night – also known as Nyx in Greek mythology, the maternal goddess of death, darkness, strife and sleep – still a period of discord, a stretch of time that threatens as much as it frees? For more information, see our Submissions & Contact page.
Feature image is a detail of Remedios Varo’s Armonía (Autorretrato sugerente) (1956). Used under Fair use.
