Emblem

            Richard O’Brien

Death grabs me by the ponytail
like Opportunity in reverse
and pulls my head back till my neck is taut.

Like this, he says.
Like a bow across a fiddle.
I do not want to turn around and face him.

At night,
on my own in the tent
at the summer festival,

I shiver in the dark,
I slide into my sleeping bag
like a shroud.

            

(Note: As described by the Glasgow University Emblem Website, an emblem ‘is a combination of an image and one or more related texts, of a type which developed in the sixteenth century’. Figures like ‘Opportunity’ were used to ‘communicate moral, political, or religious values in ways that have to be decoded by the viewer.’)

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Richard O’Brien‘s pamphlets include A Bloody Mess (Valley Press) and The Dolphin House (Broken Sleep). He is an Assistant Professor in Creative Writing at Northumbria University, and the winner of a 2017 Eric Gregory Award. His work has appeared in magazines including The White Review, Nimrod and The Poetry Review.