Bel Wallace

Susurrations

Here, I, to this assembly:
ye churchgoers and minarets,
I’ll cluck and coo you
from your Portakabins.

Here, I, in my pigeon-toed
slippers, scooting this trolley
of birdsong across
the polished linoleum

and I ask, my turbaned head
cocked, Where is the redeemer?
And through the carved rotating
door, pockets of static,

the tight echoes of a faraway blast.
Only trust in expert cartons, say
the fabric-wrapped spires.
And all around us, susurrations.

Oh, the susurrations—

Bel Wallace is a carer who practises yoga and enjoys long walks. She started writing in earnest after walking 560 miles of a pilgrim route to Santiago de Compostela. Her writing has been shortlisted in various competitions, including the 2022 Bridport Poetry Prize and the 2023 Janklow & Nesbit Bath Spa Prize. Her poems have been published in Ink, Sweat and Tears, Raceme, Allegro, Lighthouse and Magma. In a previous life she was a primary school teacher.  Instagram @belwallace_writer

Bel wrote the following about ‘Susurrations’:

This is a piece of beginner’s luck with a form of bibliomancy. Like much poetry, it’s a game, a puzzle; you make (and break) your own rules. I decided to incorporate every word that I’d picked from the chosen page, but repeated ‘susurrations’, a kind of ecstasy. I just love words, especially that one. I like the weird voice which emerges here - a 19th century preacher-cum-bird, how the bombastic  ‘I’ disappears, dissolves when it poses the unanswerable question. For me, the whole piece has a post-apocalyptic feel. None of this was planned, I just let it happen. My subconscious is saying nothing.