By Lizzy Ioannidou
There’s a place
In the woods
Where the dead come alive
And the living melt into the foliage.
Every dawn
At the edge
Of the woods where it meets
Barren earth a boy weeps.
From the caves
Of his elbows
Grave hole rivers flow
His head in the desert, His heart in the woods.
Like badlands the undead
Call out through the damp,
Begging release from the bonds
Of the curse of the unloved.
But the boy can hear only
The whips of his own heart,
His own forsaken heart,
Its foetal thirst for rapture springs.
Still I call
My voice sapless within the thicket: Boy with heart Release me.
I cannot weather more unlived lives.
So I rip out his heart
For I do not have one of my own
And I break into the lethal light
This unreal country 