Sarah Burgoyne: three sonnets
TENTACULUM SONNETS
1
at the enunciation of you, bloom
of witch broom
autumn. love brocades its long lung game
and lets me in your house. running
the cold gold line to find you,
winters:
a slender limb rushing as flex or bright
animal bough, especially opiate around
the night-mouth of a mollusk or urchin, an opal is you
used for grasping, moon-mouth, aloof, moving
about, your moon-bearing sense organs, vervain (in this, a gazebo)
a light which is the moon (in a plant) a tendril
the night’s noon or a tender glandular hair.
a look across the mim-
icking glass, the form which
is sound and pines bursting with ice, my voice
is the spider in your alley, it’s haunting
shake.
2
encircled by something resembling glass (frozen)
a tentacle in shape is a pine or flexing branch aft-
er an ice storm trailing here, my table, my tentacles all-
found of vapour.
each day’s door crawl, the neg-
atizing night (whose reach is this?) i spend
the lid of it, seething my mark (to carry me well). in-
sidious the reaches spread dumb-dug,
out of influence sending myself and one-
of-many-in-it (control) play me over
the party its world of recoverers (tentacles) a certain
dam reached (into) every nook i am
queen and cranny of it i eat very well now to feel,
try.
3
i am at stake with you most locked
monster winged female a head of hair
you keep me, naught-side this unlike snake thiss
garden corner.
hey unsung arms
bronze me mortal and formidable a snake shower
still tonguing gold cut off my head
i’ll bloom a horse blood-flung like everything, you
alter chaotic i turn stones by the sea
i boil can’t stay
at the foot, night’s
sandal (in the lines of it) the branches fall. obtain
them. a lank, lock
at least
this
unoriginal forgiveness
grant it give it away
my life spread
thick to bring a storm
to the country of health.
Sarah Burgoyne’s first collection _Saint Twin_ was nominated for the A.M. Klein Prize in Poetry, and her work has been shortlisted for the Montréal Poetry Prize. She lives in Montréal.