Jacqueline Hawthorn Poems

I fall back into the clasp of the long green grass, a snake unravelling in my mind,
Pushing between the heavy damp earth and weightless sky I soar
As a sparrow-hawk, plummeting, dizzy with success and fall in a strike that
disorientates the clouds. Drop like a pewter stone into the quiet thanks
...

I took a sword from the righteous and watched how they wept,
I took a knife to the homeless, diseased and bereft for
what king, what farmhand, what girl, what mother
doesn’t love a man with blood on his sleeve?
...