Ruiseñor
My husk, my alter-ego,
have mercy on me.
Purge me from your
feathered belly,
your coat that masks
decay in shades of fall.
I can hear the bombs
whistling from the sky.
your highness –
your ermine cloak
doesn’t muffle the sound;
it prevents my escape.
You’ve torn off my limbs
with your pearly teeth,
glistening, hungry–
Split tongue working
away at the bones.
I think my feet are gone.
Set me free
you amber-eyed king.
Give birth to my
limbless body,
like a helpless beetle
scurrying into nowhere.
Lucy Olsman (she/her) is a 24 year old Dutch graduate of MA Creative Writing at UCC in Ireland, and the MA English Literature at RUG in the Netherlands. Her work has appeared in Motley Magazine, Double Dutch, Still Here, the Reprise, House of Arcanum, and Abyss Literary Magazine. She is currently based in Groningen, the Netherlands, and is finishing up her novel Little Princess.
Click here for her guest article with us about the poet Jonathan Sijl, who happens to have a poem published in our third issue himself, right here for her beautiful poem ‘The sermon’ as published in our second, here please for her poetic dialogue with work by Vincent Van Gogh, which we also happily published in our third regular issue, here for her poem ‘The cat with 1 white sock’ AND its Dutch translation (issue nr. 5) and follow this link to read her feature about the life and work of the Dutch poet Nanne Tepper! Cheers :)
About this poem: last year we went on a field trip to the Mauritshuis. Lucy read the feature about this trip and got inspired by the piece ‘Señor Ruiz The Nightingale’ by Leonora Carrington:
