2 Poems by Fiona Marshall

Stripping 

Something is being stripped away
I think it’s you, leaving me
Disembodied, odd,
As if it was me who had died.
Your flesh falls off me
And I rot, down to the bone.
I am painted red, put into jars.
I call the ancestors
From a throat of dry blood,
With the brittle tinkle
Of desiccated shins
Ready to record
The words of the spirit.
Sharpen your knife.


The magic murder of winter

A knocking in the early morning
above my head from the rooftop,
the stranger of spring wanting to come in.
A bird knocking out a snail,
his beady inhumanity,
head to one side,
ragged entrails shaken out.
Again the knocking;
there is murder going on above
while I drink my coffee,
eat my bread and honey.
A faint scatter of shell
down the slanting attic window.
Then silence.


Bionote

​Fiona Marshall is a writer and editor based in London. She is author of ABSENCE, a novel, and has poetry and fiction published in a variety of outlets. Her short story, The Street of Baths , won the 2016 V.S Pritchett Memorial Prize. Her work has been commended in the Manchester Fiction Prize and in the Bridport Prize .