Passage Grave
by Rosamund Taylor
I’m in the dry centre of the passage grave,
looking at interlocking circles
carved by stone-age hands,
when the guide tells us life expectancy was twenty-five.
I'm dead, then. The guide adjusts the electric light
to create a gold glow
and asks us to imagine sunshine,
December sunshine striking silent stone.
I imagine I'm Neolithic
and pregnant, standing here,
knowing I may die soon from wounds
or childbirth. I'm taller
than the other women. When we celebrate I
chew berries and paint my face purple with their juice.
The women say
I'm a wicked goddess. We laugh
together in the dark, and a woman
kisses my stretched abdomen
where the baby's head
distorts the skin. She kisses my foot, too, all its firm callouses.
We laugh together in the dark
among dry stones and I'm
standing in Newgrange and I imagine I'm
already dead like all those who
didn't—who stepped into the sea and went under,
who never disgorged the pills. I have a year left, I have fifty, I watch
the electric light glow gold, imagine
stone-age sunshine striking stone,
and a December goddess laughing in the dark.
Rosamund Taylor was chosen for Poetry Ireland’s Introductions Series in 2015 and gave a reading as part of the Dublin International Literature Festival. This is her third time appearing on the Montreal International Poetry Prize website. She has been published in a number of magazines in the UK and Ireland, and is forthcoming in Agenda. She is currently working on a first poetry collection called Notes from an Alien.