WATCHING GRACIE AT TRNSMT
Votaries lift their hands in welcome, begging
for her blessing. In each palm an eye, blinking
as it sucks her in. Its mirrored touch transforms,
exalts her to the cloud. Her song rises, swells,
and fills the sky with vapour. This communion
summons tears and thunder, streaming bliss.
In the life to come, what relics remain? Though
carefully curated, this joy will fade, camera
rolled, consumed by feeds, smothered by
the pixels of another day. These outsourced
memories buried alive, their ghost light
gently waning under rubble made of code.
DEATH SENTENCES
Once I believed you had the power to bring dead things to life. It was in your name, in your eyes, in your aspect. It was in your voice that tasted of butterscotch and tree bark. It was in the cool touch of your fingers. It was in the ocean that swirled in and out of you, like tides rushing into a sea cleft.
Soon after we met, I dreamed about you. You smiled and offered me five wet stones from the lake shore where I’d been sitting when I first heard your name. I picked one and watched as it clothed itself in lush green grass. I thought that was how your magic worked. It flourished for a time, but I forgot to water it and it withered back to rock.
You always asked me to take care of things while you were away, and I tried hard to keep everything clean and ordered. You’d wander in from time to time, bringing the scent of the sea in your wake. You called me your friend, but you were already fading from the world I knew.
I made a life for myself. You made a legend instead, and the whole world knew your name. You shone like a lighthouse, saving souls from the sea. You kept so many alive. But the ocean filled up your eyes and then your lungs. When I heard you had died, I didn’t know how to feel. I hadn’t really seen you for years.
You exist for me now in radio voices, or shapes on screens, copied in light. They call you an icon and cast you in bronze, a watertight statue to hold your soul. All I see is a metal fungus, rooted in what used to be your veins. Your death has sentenced me to silence.
Clare O’Brien grew up in London but moved to a house by a sea-loch in the Scottish Highlands, which suits her much better. She has been a schoolteacher, a journalist, a politician’s PR and a rock star’s PA, but is currently Poet In Residence at the National Trust For Scotland’s Inverewe Garden. Her speculative novelette ‘AIRLOC’ was published in 2024 with ELJ Editions; her ekphrastic poetry chapbook ‘Who Am I Supposed To Be Driving?” responding to the music of David Bowie, came out in 2022 with Hedgehog Poetry Press. Her new chapbook ‘Breathing Out Becomes White And Snowfall’ is out this autumn with Intergraphia Books. Her work has also appeared in various British and American journals and anthologies, and she’s working on a novel and a full poetry collection. Connect with Clare on Instagram, Bluesky or on her website.