Rampion- by Nicole Cooley

Arthur Rackham

Once upon a time
a woman longed for a child, but see how one desire easily
replaces the next, see her husband climbing the high
   garden wall
with a handful of rampion, flowering scab she's traded 
   for a child.
Look, my mother says, see how the mother disappears
as rampion's metallic root splits the tongue like a knife
and the daughter spends the rest of the story alone.

"Rampion"
Nicole Cooley

Can be found in Kate Forsyth's Bitter Greens-review to come!
Page with poem available for viewing