Smithereens Press Chapbooks 'Rootless' by Jennifer Matthews | Page 23

Planning Permission

We built our home on the back of an old god
being lovers of big sky and flat roads.
Careful to follow sound practice, we kept
far from karst pits, stayed well above flood plains,
read our prayers to the bruised sky,
and made sure the basement door was unlocked.
One night the winds shifted, unsettled.
Inside me, the baby swam somersaults.
Our cats retreated to nowhere.
When the cicadas’ metallic shiver
gave way to the kettle-cry of the siren,
we descended into the god-body – our bunker
where we knelt on rugs, foreheads to the floor,
hands on our crowns, as the vortex
rumbled and raged above.
We crawled, at dawn, from under the walls
we were still paying for, reborn,
but could not find words to praise –
surrounded by a litany of blasted windows,
a road lined in medals of crumpled cars
and a congregation of debarked trees,
their long arms pointing away from the earth.

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