Kim Moore‘s first collection ‘The Art of Falling’ is published by Seren.  Her first pamphlet ‘If We Could Speak Like Wolves’ was a winner in the 2012 Poetry Business Pamphlet Competition and was shortlisted for a Michael Marks Award.  She won an Eric Gregory Award in 2011 and a New Writing North Award in 2014.  She works part-time as a peripatetic brass teacher for Cumbria Music Service.

 

 

In That Year

 

And in that year my body was a pillar of smoke

and even his hands could not hold me.

 

And in that year my mind was an empty table

and he laid his thoughts down like dishes of plenty.

 

And in that year my heart was the old monument,

the folly, and no use could be found for it.

 

And in that year my tongue spoke the language

of insects and not even my father knew me.

 

And in that year I waited for the horses

but they only shifted their feet in the darkness.

 

And in that year I imagined a vain thing;

I believed that the world would come for me.

 

And in that year I gave up on all the things

I was promised and left myself to sadness.

 

And then that year lay down like a path

and I walked it, I walked it, I walk it.