Rhiannon Auriol: Three Poems

Jubilee


rotten the platinum, or vicious silver
& here's jenny runacre in renaissance wife-beater 
all your happy days are nowhere
a kind of asphyxiate banshee welfare
erect statute
nurse obsession
negotiate exhaustion at the door of per annum 
we're only punk on special occasions
3d print the administration, the crown, everyone


Once Upon a Time in Versailles


an uneasy majesty    teenage with excess
enchanté:    the glamorous burlesque
rumours of girlish opulence    from the house of incest 
where blanched breasts froth    with palace secrets most
young kings queens lose their heads    to the lavish i hear
they own everything    la Dauphine    at her toilette
Rococo Dorothy    emeraldcity    & those ruby slippers
salon of abundance    Madonna of the mirrors
all summer she has played    at lace etiquette
dreams of glacé cherries    as courtiers curtsey
to the perfumed neck    the diamond eyes
wear chemise à la reine    & gossip into demise
their shepherdess    chief mistress
madame guillotine


Who's afraid of Hildegard von Bingen?


                                           jesus, bestie
                                           i possess great insight,
                                           unreal powers of indesign.
                                           anxious for resurrection
                                           my mysterious skin
                                           is a salvation doctrine,
                                           soft suffering machine.
                                           addicted to having revelations
                                           i have bled upon the gospels
                                           of Saint Augustine,
                                           i have been to Norwich
                                           & worshipped at the shrine
                                           of Julian. armed with an emetic
                                           of the spirit & the pious logic
                                           of the anorexic
                                           every night i illuminate
                                           my violent manuscript,
                                           push the limits of the anchorite.
                                           christ, i am but
                                           a blasphemous woman
                                           with a kink for self-annihilation,
                                           a hollow vessel
                                           to be canonised.  
                                           amen, amen.

Rhiannon Auriol is a writer interested in the creative-critical, post-internet
hybridity and the experimental interdisciplinary. A postgraduate student on the
MA in Creative & Life Writing at Goldsmiths, University of London, she is also the
founding editor of Daughterhood Zine, a publication exploring un/doings of the
notions of ‘daughterhood’ through a queer-feminist lens. A staff writer for Sunstroke
Magazine, her work has been published in - among others - Datableed Zine, SPAM
Zine, PAIN Mag, Perverse Poetry, Sunstroke Magazine, Cake, RGB Colour Scheme, And
Other Poems and her poem Love in the time of Lexapro was selected as one of the Scottish
Poetry Library’s Best Scottish Poems of 2020.

Image: Amanda Earl