Mercedes Webb-Pullman

Auden in the mirror – after The Fall of Rome

Pummeled by waves, the piers are
the field; in a lonely rain
trains lash. Abandoned ones
fill the mountain caves. Outlaws

grow fantastic gowns. The evening
pursues agents of the Fisc
through defaulters absconding with tax
of provincial towns. The sewers

send magic of private rites
to sleep; the temple prostitutes
keep literati, all the
friends imaginery.

May Cato, cerebrontic
ancient, extol the disciplines;
Marines are muscle bound, but
pay for food and mutiny.

Warm bed holds Caesar’s double,
a clerk unimportant to
work, like my writes. I do not
form officially on pink

pity with wealth, or unendowed
legs with little scarlet birds
eggs sitting on their speckled
city; flu-infected, each eye

elsewhere, vast, together,
moves across herds of reindeer
golden moss of miles and miles
very fast and silently.


worshipping pan                                

half-lit by firelight
you reach for wine
as flames flick and fog writhes
along the river, while above
stars hum in a clear dark sky
serene as background overture –
your face like a warm stone on my thighs
here beside the river running honey,
spring flowers crowned around your head;
snowdrops and jonquils, sickle-moon-reaped
from a cottage garden a century gone, planted
even then for your hair, tonight
and the salty scent of you woven
with their perfume seeks me
through mint-weed and wood smoke;
beyond life, past birth-blood and
laying out you reach me – your eyes
along the length of my body
capture mine
and I fall
always again
for the first time.

Mercedes Webb-Pullman graduated from IIML Victoria University Wellington New Zealand with her MA in Creative Writing in 2011. Her work has appeared online (Danse Macabre, Black Mail Press, Turbine, 4th Floor, Swamp, Reconfigurations, The Electronic Bridge, Bone Orchard Poetry, poetryrepairs, Connotations, and eBook After the Danse) and in print (Mana magazine, Poets to the People; Poetry from Lembas Cafe 2009, The Readstrange Collection 2010, and two books, Numeralla Dreaming and Food 4 Thought 2012 ). She lives on the Kapiti Coast, is Editor/Pacific for Danse Macabre. Some more poems here: poetrysansfrontieres.weebly.com