Self Portrait with Dreaming
SK Grout
I dream in doorways with my shell-mouth open
hoping to catch instinct or motive
or the power to wear a dress.
The night pulses with a blueness I cannot touch,
scarves around me, brazen, cataclysmic.
Sleep is an unclicked pen that won’t write.
Mountains flirt with distance yet I cannot
look my crush in the eye. Content instead
to observe the coils of her rubied hair
twisting around itself, held together
to the point of unravel by a glinting
hairpin, as if to sharpen a snake.
The moon knows the power of a snake-head.
I dream in doorways wondering when the gap
will be filled by someone other than me
wanting to speak about the seaside free from haze
and how some songs are so vivid they can turn
themselves inside out and present a new body
SK Grout grew up in Aotearoa/New Zealand, has lived in Germany and now splits her time as best she can between London and Auckland. She is the author of the micro chapbook “to be female is to be interrogated” (2018, the poetry annals). She holds a post-graduate degree in creative writing from City, University of London and is a Feedback Editor for Tinderbox Poetry. Her work also appears in Crannóg, Landfall, trampset, Banshee Lit, Parentheses Journal, Barren Magazine and elsewhere. More information here: https://skgroutpoetry.wixsite.com/poetry