“Playing Dead” and “Zelda Fitzgerald: Dear Scott”

by Kitty Donnelly

Playing Dead 

When hope’s a loose leaf pressed 

between two dark pages, 

pick a gravestone, lie down. 

Feel cold’s conduction 

rise from hollowed bones 

into your marrowed, living bones. 

Stay, unflinching. 

Watch winter sun shrouding, 

unveiling, shrouding. 

Think of the drink  

with your name on it, waiting;

your book stalled 

on the crux of revelation. 

Dawn will crown despite 

your void: its downpour pressing 

you under languageless soil. 

Nothing but your words can do you justice. 

They are your loss-defence. 

Don’t leave me to imagine them. 

Zelda Fitzgerald: Dear Scott

I gave our marriage all I had, which was myself. 

You recorded my aphorisms, syllable by syllable. 

I found your female characters soluble, 

remote, with princess tendencies; 

want of hardship gifting their expressions 

the privilege you mistook for beauty.

Who owns my voice? I thought I might 

presume I did without debate or copyright.

You buy silence with tennis lessons, not sanity.

You stride in – a whiff of gin & polished leather; 

lean against my bolted widow, flick ash in my vase.

Who are you anyway? You address a creation

that has veered from your storyline. 

Who am I? When we meet in the asylum garden,

the moon will have bleached my hair 

back to the spilled dark gold it was 

the night we lay on Montgomery gravestones 

unripe with youth, two hoarders of dreams. 

Kitty Donnelly's first collection, 'The Impact of Limited Time', was the joint-winner of the Indigo Dreams Collection Competition. Her second collection is due to be published in 2022. She was nominated for a Jerwood Compton Fellowship in 2021 & has had poems published in The Rialto, Abridged, The Honest Ulsterman, Mslexia, Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal, amongst other publications. She has written reviews for Mslexia Max, The Beautiful Space, Poets Directory & The Tupelo Quarterly.