share


From: Acheron

 

 

                                            we pass through a series of moral systems –
                            the accumulations of good acts, the weighing
of bad, we note cicatrices of consequence

 

for as many as twenty generations after,
                            we count the number of words spoken and
                                            how many were wrong. The function of moral

 

                                            systems differ according to era: historical
                            relativism rewrites the language of accounting.
Some ghosts may choose to visit facsimiles

 

of dead ancestors and punish them eternally,
                            leaving them raped and blood-bound, but
                                            we must remember this is an unmoderated

 

                                            activity: there are over five billion cases
                            pending appeal; accounting might have
the raw data but they lack the resources

 

to form conclusions. I have been
                            counted, meted; upside down I do not
                                          move the water, the water moves me.

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTOR

won a Northern Writers Award New Poets Prize in 2019. She won 2nd place in the 2020 Walter Swan Poetry Competition (18-25 category) and 2nd place in the 2020 Hive young writers competition (20-30 category). She has an MA in Poetry and Poetics from the University of York and lives in Leeds.


READ NEXT

fiction

March 2017

Initiation

Guadalupe Nettel

TR. Rosalind Harvey

fiction

March 2017

Aside from its absence of windows, my apartment is a mausoleum which bestows an epic dimension upon the important...

Interview

Issue No. 17

Interview with George Saunders

Aidan Ryan

Interview

Issue No. 17

The American short story writer George Saunders has the kind of reputation that makes one hesitate before typing his...

feature

September 2014

The Mediatisation of Contemporary Writing

Nick Thurston

feature

September 2014

Trying to figure out what marks contemporary literature as contemporary is a deceptively complicated job because the concept of...

 

Get our newsletter

 

* indicates required