LED Laser beams of Love and Protection, Transporting, A tree.

LED Laser beams of Love and Protection.

Ah,

I see.

I fear

You’re

Becoming

Ungrateful.

That’s not how

You repay my love.

Try, ‘yes! Lights!

I’d die electric death

To feel the prickly heat!

Please watch my bursting,

Watch my dash-crash-plunge

Onto your screen, reach out and touch

Me! Come visit sometime, I’m always here

Don’t worry I’m fine – to me this is breathing.’

Don’t pull that face!

Find some eyelids,

We keep them piled

In the corner.

There’s plenty. Yes,

Plenty all freshly picked

This morning.

Your skin, your linen is mine

To keep, safe and washed.

No moving now, stay still

Else you’ll get pricked

By the pins I use

To hold us all in place-

And drop dark spots on the

Softness

I took upon myself to clean.

Transporting

Breath whips water’s edge white,

The beach is a frothing pile

Of fall-out.

A smallish plaque reads:

Breath comes from faraway

And has a tendency

To do strange things.

Here the cricket’s song stings the purple air

Where you might wear shoes on tarmac.

Here the ants come looking for sweet spots

Where long days rollover like docile dogs—

A dog I was, sleeping covered in ants

When my mind was touched

By a dead old man—

Now I think solid,

Gleaming thoughts—

Of alchemy and half-goat

Gods, reaching in,

Combing the strings

Of my soul with fat, calloused fingers.

A tree.

Inspired by Luke Kerton-Johnson

The branch hanging in front of the moon is a nerve under a microscope, signalling starlings across the membrane of sky.

Old trunk runs elephant hide to its tips.

It is very small to stand by your side.

Writer's profile:

Isobel Salt (She/ Her) is a third year student studying English Literature at the University of Edinburgh. She began to develop a more serious taste for writing poetry after taking a creative writing course in 2022. Her other writing exports include plays written for Fringe (The Macbeth Inquiry 2022, Catfish The Cabaret 2023). A large source of inspiration for these poems is processing experience and the invention of memory.