Humbles by Frances Leviston

from personal site

If you have hit a deer on the road at dusk; 

climbed, shivering, out of your car 

with curses to investigate the damage 

done, and found it split apart and steaming 

far-flung in the nettle bed, utterly beyond repair, 

then you have seen what is not meant to be seen, 

is packed in cannily, coiled, like parachute silks, 

but unputbackable, out for the world to witness: 

the looping, slicked-up clockspring 

flesh’s pink, mauve, arterial red, 

and there a still-pulsing web of royal veins 

bearing the bad news back to the heart; 

something broken, something hard, black, 

the burst bowel fouling the meat 

exposed for what it is, found out – as Judas, 

ripped from groin to gizzard, was found 

at dawn, on the elder tree, still tethered to earth 

by all the ropes and anchors of his life.

Frances Leviston was born in Edinburgh in 1982, and grew up in Sheffield.

She received an Eric Gregory Award in 2006. Her first collection, Public Dream, was published by Picador in 2007. She has worked as a bookseller, a secretary, a writing tutor, and a snowboarding instructor, and has reviewed poetry for publications including the TLS, theGuardian, and the Yorkshire Post.