Poem Of The Month: December 2014

For December's Poem of the Month, I have chosen the poem 'Fox Cycle' by Bethany W. Pope.

It is taken from her collection Undisturbed Circles.

Fox Cycle is a traditional sonnet crown; adorned with a

continuous double-acrostic that runs down the left and

right margins of each sonnet and which, taken together,

form another poem. It details the life of a vixen as she

(being trickster) slips between the world of the living and

the world of the dead.

Fox Cycle

Vixen knows terrible secrets

The vixen dug into the earth, her home.

Her belly ached with glassy pain as her

expanding cervix gaped for her daughter.

Vixen did not think quite as you or I.

Instinct led her to scour these yew roots, stab

Xyst-like order into the forest. Small

explosions detonated her gut. She

never slowed until she felt the hard press:

Kenned her cub’s arrival. There wasn’t time;

no lining of grass or fur. This mystic,

overwhelming birth took hold too fast. Her

wild eyes dilated as she pushed the

sack, the blood, the baby into the dirt.

The cub was born into stench and darkness.

Image by Adam Rudden

This is the first poem in a sequence of seven.

You can read the rest of them in Bethany's collection "Undisturbed Circles".

Copies are available to purchase below.

The author has asserted her/his right under Section 77

to be identified as the author of this work.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from

the British Library.