Dr. Jenny McAuley is a writer and academic currently resident in Oxford. Since receiving her doctorate in English Studies from the University of Durham, she has held postdoctoral research associateships, and taught English literature of all periods from the Renaissance to the contemporary, at Durham, at the University of Oxford and Queen Mary University of London.
DAY BY BIRCHLIGHT (WINTER)
Rose-gold at daybreak,
through morning’s length
gold-white—this light spilt
down shining limbs
reflects like milk, by noon
lies still, bone-white
on paler flesh, chalk-soft—
late afternoon, this body
moulting light, rattles
its naked quills, admits
to stains, scuffs, slits—
ribbons of peeling skin;
trails their fluttering shreds
from dull red scars,
lets gaunt contours
thicken grey with evening,
assert themselves
in fleeting monochrome—
Dusk shakes out
its tangled blackening crown,
spins itself to glittering filaments
twisted in rose-forms
for the eyes of night.
‘QUESTO È IL BACIO DI TOSCA!’
The point is
jealous vigilance—
the good falcon
sights my presence
gracing the rapist’s table,
eye in the candleflames,
glancing blade, sharp
as a lover’s suspicions;
patiently glittering
under her hovering fingers—
her spread hand hunting
my flamelit length
beyond her abandoned wineglass
while dark eyes track the prey.
Good falcon, strike:
feather this rousing hilt with flesh,
administer your kiss—
sacred weapon of justice.
A MEMENTO MORI (after Ann Radcliffe)
Stopped in an atmosphere of cedarwood and mildew,
cold fingertips unpinch, let slip a black silk veil—
sink back, mid-gasp, in shocked collapse of limbs
below the massive frame where morning’s light
has coolly revealed to ma’amselle’s inquisitive eye,
and unveiling hand, an outrage of vermin upon
unliving, undead flesh: a nose gone, a mouth
foaming with maggots; sunk eyelids weeping
through ecstasies of decay, meticulously
formed from bees’ work with sculptors’ tools. Wax worms
adorn the wax face, and the moulded hands;
wax figures itself in the rotting cerecloth.
And here lies ma’amselle, still as this effigy, senseless—
her thoughts arrange themselves into no stanzas.