Poetry by Julie Hogg

​Nature Lover
 
 
Like a mixed-species
flock, we rode with a
 
jackdaw, perpendicular
to each other, leaking
 
diesel from the sump,
throttling ritual magic,
 
habitually interrupting
all natural mellifluous
 
noises of nature, tactile
drawn borderlines of
 
animal, woman, man,
 
across wheat in a vale,
chilled on the pillion,
 
blind alley submission,
nocturnal creatures at
 
daybreak, cryptically
silent, lack of sleeping 
 
bleary black owl eyes.
We stopped, I ran off,
 
you caught it by short
rufous rounded wings,
 
swiftly twisted its neck,
a dead bird never sings,
 
snared skinned rabbits
stiff in headlights never
 
breathe, nor a contorted
red deer in a deep freeze.
 
 
 
 
Pillarbox
 
 
Overshot a heady hairpin
     reciting it again into this
 
   August golden valley where
           we know who we are and
 
    we are who we knew, all
              panoramic sapient allsorts
 
     apodictic, watertight, how
            it runs through us like rock
 
      we are peppermint and erudite,
                how a silver marcasite viper
 
        shakes loose on my smallest
                 finger, so I pull over myself,
 
         off an informally beaten track,
     admire the view, new tricks
 
   of the light, smack Vermillion
lips, brush varnish over chips
 
at the place where you met.

Bio: Julie Hogg is a Poet from the North East of England. She has work published in many literary journals and magazines including Black Light Engine Room, Butcher’s Dog, Proletarian Poetry, StepAway Magazine and Well Versed. Featured in anthologies by Ek Zuban, Litmus, Zoomorphic and ‘Writing Motherhood’ from Seren,  her debut pamphlet ‘Majuba Road’ is available from Vane Women Press.

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