POETRY SPOTLIGHT: Kirsty Niven

Who are you?
Kirsty A. Niven is from Dundee, Scotland. Her poetry has appeared in numerous publications, including A Prince Tribute, The Machinery, The Dawntreader and GFT Presents: One in Four.

Where can we find out more about you?
@kirsty_kobrakid

A Walk Home

One small day condensed to the patter of rain on a hood –
and you toddling along.
A still puddle, anticipating the stomp.
A wellington poised, pink and gleaming –
to ignite a watery explosion.

Horses in the field huddle, heads bowed,
their manes flowing.
They watch as we plough on,
pure drips trickling down our faces.

You look up, suddenly, smiling.
Beatific.

The droplets kiss your sweet face,
the rain blessed to share this moment with you.

Still

A pallid smear across the screen,
lifeless and fleshy –

The bulbous head, moon-like.
A button nose, humanising.

An oily imprint on canvas
never to be reanimated.

Plaster fingers, sweet little pustules,
that will never reach for me.

The machine gurgles the news,
the silence astounds.

In a pool of seepage,
it oozes forth from me.

It. He. What could have been.

Fairest of Them All

She no longer sits alone in her room.
Crowds of baying men, screeching wolf-whistles,
surround her – track her every move.
Her moonlit knife lays, cold and forgotten,
gathering dust around itself for warmth –
a second-hand fur coat reeking of smoke.
A Christmas gift rendered unnecessary,
her empty cell awaits a new arrival.

Art shoots forth from her fingers,
so carelessly, like charcoal spider webs.
No more are they locked under starry beds,
her paintings flourish in the sunlight.
Another artwork complete, its crimson oil dries
under the star-abandoned sky.
Her swollen lips feed from rusting beer taps,
paid with linty coppers from testosterone pockets.

Given up on love, she resorts to lust –
kindling obsessions in all she meets.
Unexplainable link after unexplainable link,
she holds such ‘understandings’ with every man.