"If this is the Pantheon" by Louise Mather

This earth is upended,

and before and before,

I am wrenching your bones

for blue sequins

from the glass roof,

icicles folded in ribbons,

this statue once had wool

in green cobalt – lights,

the attic opens you like stone –

it cannot be the mausoleum,

ashes of birth are feathers

torn from our skin –

you harvest faces,

marble as cold as the river

after the smoke fell,

the mannequin never had life

to give to death –

I do not want to know

if this is the Pantheon.

Louise Mather is a writer from Northern England and founding editor of Acropolis Journal. Nominated Best of the Net 2021, and a finalist in the Streetcake Poetry Prize, her work is published in various print and online literary journals. Her debut pamphlet ‘The Dredging of Rituals’ is out with Alien Buddha Press, 2021. She writes about ancestry, rituals, endometriosis, fatigue and mental health. Twitter @lm2020uk