Sue Burge is this week’s podcast guest talking about her love of poetry and cinema and where the two meet. This is a key poem Sue’s debut collection In the Kingdom of Shadows.
Gothic
A girl, her dress a blank canvas
for long-fingered shadowstains;
a bed, draped, tucked with
the coolness of scented cotton –
under, decay blooming
like a ripening bruise.
A man, noctambulant,
walks a tightrope between two lives.
Shadows, forged by the lamplighter,
undulate like a swirled cloak,
finding the cracks of a world
stitched together too many times.
A garden, walls smooth and straight as a tomb,
the earth beneath sown with broken fingernails.
And me, caught in the projector’s dancing beam,
lips parted, wanting it
dark, dark, dark.
Poetry Non-Stop 