Agoloso Presents - Atondido Stories Agoloso Presents - Mama Mada | Page 283
Mama Mada
Traces by Be n Park e r
Allotments. Shattered chimney stacks.
A black bag tangled like a crow
in the leafless tree. As you walk
beyond the last of the deserted
red-brick factory buildings
the city rusts around you. The river
thins to a stream that could be forded
by a fallen branch. This is a place
of past tenses, an archaeology
of skeletal bikes, single gloves
and bleached cans of beer
the supermarkets no longer stock.
Spent matches hint at flame on flesh.
The rituals of childhood. Something
small and broken in the grass.
Mirrored
by Eleano r Ho o k er
She visited again last night, no pike this time.
She was singing too. Her song is the sound of a heavy body
Dragging itself, deadly, up the stairs. Her malady
not too dissimilar to that thud-thump heartbeat
In my ears. She brought mirrors into my mind
and in my mind she filled the mirrors with crows,
huge-beaked, hungry crows. That fed. And though
I couldn’t move, I kept my eyes open,
I wasn’t frightened; I knew sooner or later I’d wake,
And she would have to leave with her mirrors and her crows,
Leaving my pulse behind.
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