Jim Newcombe

                                    Boundaries were defined

                                    by harsh words

                                    and bolted doors,

                                    yet by night I snuck

                                    past sleeping sentinels,

                                    the dark air pregnant with

                                    unanswered prayers,

                                    the page of each wall

                                    scripted with shadow,

                                    seeming to swell

                                    with pressure, as though

                                    something passed through it.

                                    Rain tapped at each window

                                    where the gloating stars

                                    peered in like patient

                                    voyeurs, the rhubarb

                                    blanched in moonlight

                                    as the clematis

                                    loomed, scaling the house,

                                    rending foundations

                                    I could not fortify.

                                    Spiders were hatched

                                    from cracked corners.

                                    I searched for clues,

                                    listened at keyholes

                                    for conspiracies,

                                    my memory mapped

                                    with creaking floorboards

                                    that betrayed my presence.

                                    I would spend hours

                                    in prayer and soliloquy

                                    trying to subsume

                                    the guilt I had

                                    inherited. Before they

                                    could be caught or killed

                                    the spiders

                                    would scuttle back

                                    to their dark dimension,

                                    as though a gash

                                    could suck up its own blood.

                                    Somewhere in hiding

                                    was the eight-legged

                                    mother of them all,

                                    her deftly strung web

                                    a grid of carcasses;

                                    wings, shells, corrupted husks

                                    mauled and festering.

                                    I couldn’t sleep for fear of it.

                                    Sometimes I would try

                                    the cellar door:

                                    deep and forbidding,

                                    that underground lair,

                                    where steps descend

                                    into a darkness

                                    that writhed with

                                    apprehensions.

                                    I couldn’t reach the light switch

                                    to dispel my suspicions

                                    which grew like rumours

                                    of a secret sin.

                                    One day I would confront

                                    whatever was down there

                                    and return victorious

                                    (if return at all)

                                    to where another, like me,

                                    would dare to descend

                                    along the cellar’s corpse-cold walls,

                                    dank and mildewed,

                                    the treacherous gloom

                                    now bristling, bristling

                                    and black with all

                                    that is unassumed.