Henbane
Bex Hainsworth
My bed is a longboat, set adrift
by storm winds. I am garlanded
with nightshade, bile-coloured flowers
clotting black. A herb to wake the dead.
My grandfather, pale in funeral parlour
makeup, caked at the neck like a ruff,
shakes my shoulders and tells me
he poured hebenon in the king’s ear.
I roll away and find Cassandra
clawing at her candle wax throat,
choking on visions of burning
temples and breached walls.
The bedsheets prickle with evidence;
women are on trial because men
went mad. Purple-threaded petals
still gather on their unmarked graves.
Seeds are sown in my spine, they sink
like ointment. I am softening,
my body is grass where clumped
plants, ignored by cattle, are curled
in pig tongues. Bristled wing stumps
are rubbed in mud. They collapse
with croaking laughter, stretch
trotters, believe they are flying.
by storm winds. I am garlanded
with nightshade, bile-coloured flowers
clotting black. A herb to wake the dead.
My grandfather, pale in funeral parlour
makeup, caked at the neck like a ruff,
shakes my shoulders and tells me
he poured hebenon in the king’s ear.
I roll away and find Cassandra
clawing at her candle wax throat,
choking on visions of burning
temples and breached walls.
The bedsheets prickle with evidence;
women are on trial because men
went mad. Purple-threaded petals
still gather on their unmarked graves.
Seeds are sown in my spine, they sink
like ointment. I am softening,
my body is grass where clumped
plants, ignored by cattle, are curled
in pig tongues. Bristled wing stumps
are rubbed in mud. They collapse
with croaking laughter, stretch
trotters, believe they are flying.
Bex Hainsworth is a poet and teacher based in Leicester, UK. She won the Collection HQ Prize as part of the East Riding Festival of Words and her work has appeared in Nimrod, Sonora Review, The McNeese Review, and trampset. Walrussey, her debut pamphlet of ecopoetry, is published by The Black Cat Poetry Press. Twitter: @PoetBex / Instagram: @poet.bex
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