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.

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