Winter 2022 | Sarah Crossland Reads "Axis Mundi" – MQR Sound
Sarah Crossland reads her poem "Axis Mundi" from MQR's Winter 2022 issue.
Beneath the jacaranda–blue as a breath lost to a kiss, acoustic paint—the light like a muscle lifts my hand, and I’m a child again: in our gymnasium, courting the maypole, polished pine climbed over with crepe—festoon, filet lace, greenery—a hundred plaits in our faithful fists. I wind mine as if tying a rhyme around a song—the cassette tape of a brass band flickers and in the lacuna, barefoot and bows, I claim the color for my eyes: carnelian, moss and citrus, binding rose—I did not know what to worship then, what was beastly and what a lie. Laureate, I held my scar- red ribbon taut, and in the current of girls walked—withershins, unraveling—to where I had already been.
For more from the Winter 2022 issue of MQR, you can purchase the issue here.
