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Rachel Carney
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the poet
Writer, creative writing tutor and academic Rachel Carney is based in Cardiff. She won the 2021 Pre-Raphaelite Society Poetry Competition, and has had work place highly in several other competitions. Her poetry has appeared in One Hand Clapping, The Interpreter's House, Ink, Sweat & Tears and elsewhere. Rachel's debut collection, Octopus Mind, with its themes of perception, creativity and neurodiversity, was one of The Guardian’s Best Poetry Books of 2023.
the poems
Self-Portrait as
Pieces of a Saint
After Saint Teresa of Avila
you may kiss my jaw in Rome
or grip my finger bones in Avila
peer through thick museum glass at my shrivelled
drooping heart and see how they transfigured me
at death into a slice of pious art
my humble flesh spooned out in prayer
my left arm pinned for you in crystal
decomposing slowly in its own realm
I am exhumed again
my skin ripped from its frame
plundered for your touch your taste
devoured by your curiosity your faith in me
and though you hold the pieces of me in your hands
I am not here
I never was
Dys
I want to dis/
entangle the sly hiss
of dys, to dis/embowel the fraught
dis/ease of it, as it slips
in front, so sure, so certain.
I want to dis/turb its
dis/avowal, crumple it,
curtail its sudden fist, flung
like an abuser’s kiss.
I want to dis/arm the
beast of it, dis/dain
its dis/approval,
dis/pel its dis/paraging
taste, its dull
dis/gust, how it dis/
figures our praxis,
dis/misses us.
I dis/inter dys –
its cold corpse
dis/carded
on the kitchen floor,
like an old god.
Mine
I’ve known you, always,
in the small pearl of your absence,
drifting slowly away from me
across the years.
I’ve felt your restless waters,
your crumbling edifice, your waves.
I’ve seen how dark this cave is,
full of dancing shadows, echoes of echoes.
There is no avoiding the possibility of you
in the ebb and flow of ongoing tides.
I’ve seen you in the flash of the sun on the water.
I blink, and then you’re out of sight.
I’ve heard your quiet breath,
as you lap against my surface.
Your shore is wide and open, your song a song of life,
your ripples hardly there.
I’ve always known how impossible you are.
A bubble, faint with light. The skin of you so thin.
What would it take to turn you into flesh?
How can we know what could have been?
Publishing credits
All poems: Octopus Mind (Seren Books)
