‘Seshat’ by Scherezade Siobhan

Don’t look for coherence in Siobhan’s poem, just give yourself up to it. Just read each couplet as a stand-alone—a bright bloody scene in a dream sequence. You may be tempted to stop, to look up the slightly antiquated words, the “damsons” the “mortise,” but don’t stop. Don’t look up words on your first read. Just stand in the water and take ceaseless pummeling of image and sounds, and words, until you are dizzy with the emotion of it. For at the end, you’ll feel, whether you’re a writer or not, what it means to be gripped by the passion to write.

Anthropoid