Archive
Freedom from Fear
Three words chalked on a blackboard
in a quiet lane in a small village
in a county south of the city,
the bold powdered strokes larger
than life in the draining light,
the doorstep a glimmer of white.
There is bitter chill in the air,
my face is a tight mask, no-one
else is on foot, few cars pass.
This could be the dwelling raided
at dawn, the children of asylum
seekers taken to a locked cell,
re-living the nightmare, father
bundled into one van, mother, sick
with fear, hustled into another,
her arms around them all through
the twists, turns, lurches, the pause
at a perimeter fence, key clang doors,
the destination just north of the city,
on the outskirts of a county town,
in a country that claims to be home.
Helen Overell has had work published in magazines including Staple, The Interpreter’s House, The Frogmore Papers and Acumen. Her first collection, Inscapes & Horizons, was published by St Albert’s Press.
Effigy
Skin-skimmed bone —
an involution of close-folded
wings above stepped ribs
arching from a backbone
made of threaded pebbles;
pelvis white as flint,
face to the wall,
knees drawn up,
the world shut out.
Yet when he calls her name,
stone is undone, she turns
her head towards him, eyes
deep shivered wells
fractured with light.
Helen Overell has had work published in magazines including Staple, The Interpreter’s House, The Frogmore Papers and Acumen. Her first collection, Inscapes & Horizons, was published by St Albert’s Press.
qarrtsiluni 