I spin in fractious movements
trying to dispel colours
to each angle of a room.
Yet, rooms are plentiful
spanning corridors,
twisting corners,
burrowing low
and reaching skyward high.
In the right light,
you’ll catch my meaning
sitting back to eye
curious turns of a spinning coin;
iridescent, metallic sides
can (when lucky) entrap senses,
mimicking exotic butterflies:
whose sublime markings
are only seen by keen watchers -
the most finely attuned audiences
as they marvel upon symmetry,
syntax choices, subject matter,
voice, style and tone,
drinking in vivacious,
paint palette eyespots,
activated by each wingspan flutter
whilst new fingers turn pages
of freshly inked manuscript.
Many peep through,
hypnotised, stunned
like a wasp’s sting,
lingering on thresholds,
perhaps too long,
fooling a false confidence.
Most stride past,
too busy to even glance.
Each line,
I try to invigorate
pumping with too much;
lyricism drowns
coating simplicity
in liquid gold,
too sticky, too gelatinous,
are such efforts,
but a fear exists
in stripping back:
allowing only brown spines
to be judged,
enclosing beautiful wings
within beige centres,
hiding metaphorical scars,
nuances that slash
effort-filled hues –
strangling light.
Still, I spin,
hearing others in nearby rooms,
fractious pens scratching,
late at night,
like my own.
Often, I hear torrents
of river-flow typing,
manuscripts lengthening,
growing from sapling, short stories…
In other rooms, spin, spin, spin.
I am far from the only one.
Writers, plethoras of writers,
spin as academic wagers:
all thinking of novice ideas;
a new hook-line
or novice premise -
editing, cutting back,
embellishing or simplifying,
now and again,
rather confusingly,
a muddying cocktail
of too many techniques.
Part of a swarm,
my eye colourings smudge out
harder to decipher in hordes;
each eyespot of my wings
still flutters in spasmodic hope,
a held breath underwater.
Sadly, colours close,
sleeping in ubiquitousness,
until my soul is fuelled again,
ready to spin, spin spin,
not faster, but cleverer,
showcasing now to a selective few,
my eyespot markings
of newly fleshed writing.
by Emma Wells
Emma is a mother and English teacher. She has poetry and prose published with various literary journals and magazines. She is currently writing her fifth novel. She won Wingless Dreamer’s Bird Poetry Contest of 2022 and her short story entitled ‘Virginia Creeper’ was selected as a winning title by WriteFluence Singles Contest in 2021. Recently, she won Dipity Literary Magazine’s 2024 Best of the Net Nominations for Fiction with her short story entitled ‘The Voice of a Wildling’.
photo by: Frank Cone
Aayo Magazine 