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  • Writer's pictureFrancine Cunningham

READ a POEM: Salt the colour of a God

Last year I took part in the  CV2 magazine's 2- day poem contest, which if you don't know is a contest in which they provide you with ten words and you must write a poem in 48 hours. Sadly my poem didn't win but I thought I'd share it anyways because why not? Its a fun contest. Here were the words: salt, becoming, furuncle, bearded, fortune, hinky, animate, fervent, prune, andemerald.


salt, the colour of a god


the salt sits in my left palm dyed with the small foil packet of emerald powder I found in the dust that marked the nebulas boundary between dresser and wall after you moved out

in the morning light the salt glinted with specks of gold the colours reminding me of Loki, and then you how we would argue over who would win in a fight the bearded Thor with all this strength or, the slick Loki with his cunning mind I always screamed, —Fortune favours the smart you always repeated over and over with fervent adamant denial, —But Thor has a magical hammer


with the memory comes unexpected pain a twinge of guilt and then something deeper I didn’t think it would hurt I had assumed, like every love before you that the throb of loss would be minimal to my person more like fingers wrinkled like a prune in a bath dehydrated, but still whole instead, your loss went under the skin becoming something that tore open instead of merely wrinkling


in my mind for a second you are frozen memory, standing captured in the nebulas boundary of the door and the hallway I try to animate your eyes, to make them tell me they love me like before things went hinky but the memory continues and you step from one side to the other and I am left standing in a bedroom with salt the colour of a god

pressure from my fingers opens the window I thrust my hand though into the morning light and like a furuncle, swollen and begging to be sliced from the body, I turn my hand over and let the emerald grains slip between fingers trying to let go of the pain that was only ever supposed to wrinkle, never tear


- Francine Cunningham

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