Dark came to the Charnel House
by way of bats and roaches,
lay low in drains with the clot
of spawn in its throat,
wrote on walls.
Those days I knew
what time the ferry ran and
when the cockle harvest would begin,
slid down through sheets
to curl shut in the womb
the blankets made at the foot
of the bed. I felt the hand
of night and the pools
its fingers stirred as it crept.
Hilary Hares has an MA in Poetry from Manchester Metropolitan University. Her work appears in anthologies and magazines including Amaryllis, Antiphon, Bare Fiction, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Magma, South, Obsessed-with-Pipework, Poems-in-the-Waiting Room, The Interpreter’s House, The Fat Damsel, Under the Radar. She was shortlisted for the Grey Hen and Paragram-Paradox Prizes 2016. Her collection, A Butterfly Lands on the Moon is sold in support of Phyllis Tuckwell Hospice Care.
Lonesome October Lit 