A Poem by Samuel Tongue

Committal

A hill to die on, not once but many times.
Even in this airlock of a burial cairn,
I hear the drumming of a big heart,
a sizzle of rain, & the newly electrified
trains running their static. This lair
is a quiet den, a bone-deep home,
the wind about its business outside,
& the motorway full of toys.
I lost my gloves climbing this wet street,
a scuff quartered from a precious hill.
The ancients ourselves knew to keep
the dead tightly bound, ligatured
for birth through death’s tight canal.
Fine pottery, stone-axe heads, food
& drink. We have finished the bread
you had left in the freezer, the last piece
as good as the first. On a clear day,
we can see coast-to-coast from here.

Samuel Tongue's first collection is Sacrifice Zones (Red Squirrel, 2020) and he has published three pamphlets: The Nakedness of the Fathers (Broken Sleep, (2022), Stitch (Tapsalteerie, 2018), and Hauling-Out (Eyewear, 2016). Poems have appeared in Butcher’s Dog, Magma, Under the Radar, Finished Creatures, Anthropocene, And Other Poems, Irish Pages, Berlin Lit, and many other places. He works as Project Coordinator at the Scottish Poetry Library.