Fall/Winter 2015-2016



Pippa Little

MANIDOO

Toward evening a moth big as my fist
Spattered out from the laundry basket
As I lifted it for ironing~

Crumpled, unclean, it lurched
Between the full moon’s buttered smudge
And the kitchen’s glaze

And something in me feared it
So I swung out, wanting to grind it
To a stain~

Shamefully beguiling
Uninvited guest
Against my familiar surfaces~

And something in me wanted it
As if the moon had drawn it in
To look in my eyes, to dance in my skirts.
Manidoo: Ojibwe for ‘little spirit’


Pippa Little is Scots and lives near the sea in Northumberland, North East England. Her collection Overwintering, from Carcanet Press in 2012, was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Centre Prize. She is a Royal Literary Fellow at Newcastle University.

 


 

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