Louise Mather is a writer from Northern England and founding editor of Acropolis Journal. A finalist in the Streetcake Poetry Prize and Nominated Best of the Net, her work is published in various print and online literary journals including Dust Poetry Magazine, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Green Ink Poetry, Fly on the Wall Press, Selcouth Station and Feral. She placed second in the Rare Swan Press “Stories from the eyes of an owl” Ekphrastic Competition and her debut pamphlet ‘The Dredging of Rituals’ is out with Alien Buddha Press, 2021. She writes about motherhood, ancestry, rituals, endometriosis, fatigue and mental health. Twitter @lm2020uk Website: http://www.louisematheruk.wixsite.com/louisemather

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Mother Chronos

This night is a silk dress –
trembling, it births the snow.
The moon is ascended
from eiders of gothic coal,
wolves bring blood and amber,
gifts they split from the lake,
and dragged for days.
Here, pledge your bronzed heart,
for harbingers of chronos –
the body of blue sun,
dwellings of blossom,
the ocean where you shed
your skin, nocturnal.

First published in Crow, Cross & Keys

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Seams of Juvenilia

I don’t know where to begin /
day after day / ascension is deep
down in the soil / seams of stones /
womb / encased in violets /
waiting / to climb out of the lake /
dripping replica / scavenged /
torture / walls / ripped machine /
memories / caving / shapeless
power / this place / burrowed pain
not ours / I can’t / uncover /
swept toads / they say /
serenity drifts / on the other side /
but / I see / no boat /

2nd place in streetcake poetry prize 2021, printed in prize anthology

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Nephilim

A calyx of home-spun lavender,
a sacred rose wrested
of its thorns;
in their palms they sat
by the willow tree – until
the world ended.

Beneath secrets and bones,
a delicate creature
born or ripped
with spiralling time.
Hair not skin or a tail
of a beast or

a Nephilim
from the faded cascade;
in that other reality
by the floating water stream under;
the sun years away –
twined up with gold.

First published in Amethyst Review

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The Cabin in Winter

Its red skin, siren’s rasp –
snow falling through the forest
splintered like an angel,
dust, molasses, steel clouds –
orange-blue, calling to ether
through a burnt iris,
stars the shape of centaurs.
Underneath, already winter’s
blood, spun from a wolf’s tooth,
an axe, a shovel, one of us.

Exclusive to East Ridge Review