Clem Henricson is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. She is a writer and philosopher and has directed a public policy institute advising international government. Widely published, her most recent works include Morality and Public Policy and Making Space for Melancholy. Her recently published poetry includes Beached Hull, North Sea Funeral, The Ship at Night, Retire to the sea….and howl, the Bayeux Tapestry, My Child, Vitreous Detachment, Dry, Bird Crash and A mid- Covid memory of a funeral as it should be. She has also written a North Sea Memoir. 
Website: http://clemhenricson.com/index.html

Corporeal Bits

Bodies on display

cat  mouse 
deer  grouse

stretched on a taxidermist’s 
slab for preservation 

destined forever to lodge 
behind museum glass

or on the wall of a baronial hall
heads of deer hanging
fur and horns 
alongside clawed 
feathered birds

outsize power 
they stare down 
at passers by 
who look up agog

theirs’ are real animal bodies
while we voyeurs shun 
an eternity in our skin
hedging our bets 
on paint and clay
shying away from
pickled flesh
too precious for the light of day

Dead

I spy with a touch of shock
gunge smeared squirrel
drained of life fat
globules sliding from gaps in its head
that once were eyes and mouth

sloughed in leaf mulch
sodden fur at odds with the world
stuck with glue
on a grey sinuous corps

its limbs 
lie limp off stage
either side of a digestion bag

as they did with my father 
 – singular loved
 washed shrunk
arms and legs splayed
he stood out in death

as should Christ
– but on repeat he
recedes into the walls
on which too many images
of crucified bodies hang.

Splinter

Split wood
innards exposed 
lethal shavings

within the cradle 
of a darker tougher bark
a  grasped log

inflicting a splinter
just beneath the skin
the devil to get out

not killer glass 
but flexible little bastard 
painful beyond irritation

so with needle I sit and dig
by the fire that burns 
the log that did the deed

I sit hammering 
nagging at flesh
until at last a dot 

appears above the parapet 
of skin – baring gums I nab it
pull the twig out

a wrench on my tiny nerve endings 
that stake their claim 
by forcing water from the eyes 

in a face that turns to the fire to dry
replacing grimace
with a comfort flame

Shriek and sleep                                        

shrivelling in vain to
shed cellophane wrap
round flesh 
 
as raw from speculation
as skinned meat  
on a butcher’s table
 
I can not
shred the throttle skin
that has me in its case 
 
muscles pinned by sleep
that saps 
and snaps my will
 
again the shriek from outside
located through a brain haze 
the devil’s sound 
 
electric bolts shoot
but the heart
will not start
 
too sunk in the pit 
flailing  to break strings
round the neck
 
shrinking from effort
free falling
into dumb
 
but with screaming
on repeat
angst oxidised 
 
finally I rouse
and wonder crazed
if a child is being killed
 
or counter theory 
that foxes 
are having sex