Shore Poets
Jane McKie won the 2011 Edwin Morgan International Poetry Competition with 'Leper Window, St Mary the Virgin', while her first collection, Morocco Rococo (Cinnamon Press), was awarded the 2008 Sundial/Scottish Arts Council prize for best first book of 2007. Her other publications include When the Sun Turns Green (Polygon, 2009) and Garden of Bedsteads (Mariscat, 2011).
She currently teaches on the MSc in Creative Writing at the University of Edinburgh.
Leper Window, St Mary the Virgin
The contagion of lepers
has lifted.
The low glass, where they crouched
even lower,
remains, but their breath,
their rash, their lack,
has passed into the lace
of shadows in the yard.
Where God looked
but did not touch,
the lip of sandstone
is purled with fissures.
Converts
We dream of banana trees, a rummy sun,
round doubloon. A Jamaican breeze
sifts through washed linen, makes shirts
and sheets gape feather mouths.
We’ll never go, but picture the sand
as a spread of lit coals underfoot.
We’ll never go, but the Church of God
of Prophecy calls to us, its prayers take root
in the breath of doze and bibles tumble
from our laps. Wake up! This antiseptic world
shows a little colour, an inkling. Here –
gold; and here – selves; slow to be reborn,
but it happens. As snow slides off the roof
hens stir in the barn, every last one
about to lay. We dream of hummingbirds,
newly hatched and clucking, crimson tongues.
We dream of banana trees, a rummy sun
on the turn, our heads aflame with psalms.