4
Three Tanka by Carly Holmes
You came, Jonah-like,
from the yews' bony corset,
dragging the last branch.
We heaped the pyre with our pasts.
We held hands and leapt the flames
Give me your bite. Hard.
Here. Harder than you'd want to
without my urging.
I'll wear the blood rush, the blush,
the wound of you as a brooch.
I cover my eyes
and count back from ten. You stand
at my side and wait.
This is how we hide and seek:
turning, finding, hand in hand.
Carly Holmes lives and writes on the west coast of Wales. Her short fiction has been published in numerous journals and anthologies and her debut novel, The Scrapbook, was published by Parthian in 2014. Carly is on the editorial board for the Lampeter Review and manages and hosts The Cellar Bards, a group of writers who meet monthly for an evening of spoken word poetry and prose. www.carlyholmes.co.uk