Frances-Ann Norton: Poetry

  Delighted to be published in:-  https://www.cistaarts.com/product-page/chapbook-series-3-gone-with-the-wind Learning craft from the wind   There was once a woman. Who learned craft from wind, art from the sea and design from the earth. She sewed intricate organic patterns in labyrinthine repeats. Her creativity was celebrated through the land. She was known as La Corachine, beautiful shell of the sea. Her daughter Powys was as natural as the elements, precious as comfort and radiant with gold-nature. One day an old woman coloured like an autumn day came to their door. “I want what is yours.” She said, and stuck a pin into the girl, who transformed into a brown-bird and flew off. “Old woman”, cried the mother, please cook a meat and potato pie for us. “Of course”, she sang, catching the brown-bird-daughter. And made her into a pie with potato skins. The leftover bones she threw into a corner of the garden. In three days, a beautiful tree g...

 First published in Collect Arts Summer 2023 edition Stone all the flowers   The year of the art school tutorials. The difficult woman you are to me, and the difficulty I present to you. The year of my recovery and your husband’s death.   Your husband fails and worsens through the days of our trimesters together. As he weakens and declines, I grow incrementally stronger. As if terrible fatalistic scales of balance, set and reset.   Do not cheat her. Give her a full measure of time and experiences with him. Pressed down, shaken together and overflowing. She, in the face of all this decay   Chooses to destroy flowers with stones. Until their purple hearts stained the cartridge with their elemental pigments.   She cuts the flowers only to waste them in the parching sun. It is the cycle of being and unbeing, the grass withers and the flower fades (Isiah 40:8). She decides to press her flowers till their lungs burst on fine co...

Breast Diaries 3 It just keeps floating to the visible Top of my consciousness Beethoven symphony 7 Second movement That’s the kind of gloomy I feel. Les Misrables was great! I cried all the way through, fabulous release I can feel a bout of over eating coming on Just anything to numb the pain. Seven hours of solid paperwork Just anything to completely absorb myself in Food Pinterest Weepy movie Work. Anything so I don’t have to think About this left breast Numb Absorb Deaden Suffocate Stuff down Suppress Stamp down Tamp Insulate. All these things I’m cotton-wooling my mind I’m bubble wrapping my emotions Because it is weird, it is hard and it is so, so scary. All the ifs and buts and two whole weeks to wait Am I fine? Am I ok? No I’m not ok I’m starting arguments I’m hypercritical I’m prickly I’m lashing out I will be gone, they will continue I have to keep saying that to myself b...

Breast Diaries 2 Mortality. Death. I will go, They will continue. I will die, They will remain. Lashing out for no good reason. Hogging the conversation. Being a downer to people – the doom bearer. I am being a pain in the ass. It is so distracting. images : Ring of Brogdar Orkney, satelite map https://archaeologistsinresidence.wordpress.com/2015/06/01/kirkwall-grammar-school-s1-rapid-counter-mapping-of-the-ring-of-brodgar/  Ring of Brogdar,  http://www.odysseyadventures.ca/articles/stone-circles/orcadian/article_brodgar.htm

Breast Diaries 1 Ultrasound excavations back-lit landscape night-time outlook moon-lit scene. On screen In black and white The insides of my breast in greyscale. The enormous wooden TV dad bought in 1974 Watching the horses and horse and horses Jump fences at Aintree Like nothing I had ever seen Every horse and rider a crackling, fizzing, silhouette. This arial view of the countryside with blobs and strings, patterns and sub patterns Rings of Mercury And strange un-named planets Is my interior taskscape. Turn away Hide from Fear worse than anything else what? images, Stone Henge and Norfolk archaeological site.