Ayahuasca by Rose Mary Boehm

To the left of the old Inca temple
you find the hotel
where oxygen is piped
into every room.
One callecita
further up that breathless hill
boasts a hostal
where even the cockroaches
drop dead on windowsills.

Tomorrow you forget
what your ego whispers
when you meet each other
in that sweaty hut,
vomiting your old perceptions
during many hours
following the spoors
of your own ghosts
given presence
by the magic ayahuasca.

A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm lives and works in Lima, Peru. Author of two novels and three poetry collections, her work has been widely published in US poetry journals. Her latest full-length poetry MS, ‘The Rain Girl’, has been published by Chaffinch Press in August of 2020.

Very Near Where the Birches Grew by Rose Mary Boehm

Something lives by Nedderston bridge.
Not on land, not under the overhanging
branches of the weeping willow,
but in the dark water.

Where we used to hang out to learn
about fear, where we shrieked and splashed
in the fast-moving rivulets, where we imagined
the trolls and faeries falling on us 
from the willow’s confusion,
where sunlight barely reached the soft,
squashy cushions woven from water plantain,
and sweet flag, and big blue stem.
Something is following us.

You probably think I made it all up, or perhaps
that I am a true witch's daughter.
Don’t be so sure.
Look now and you'll see the outline
of a dark, undulating shape
moving silently below the water.







A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm lives and works in Lima, Peru. Author of two novels and two poetry collections, her work has been widely published in US poetry journals (online and print). She was twice winner of the monthly Goodreads Poetry competition.

Rose Mary Boehm - Consequences / Life and Death Tree

Consequences

Willow, wicker, wicca,
binding birch and ash
on witches’ brooms.

First to leaf, the last
to lose. Water seeker.
Accessory to earth's
rainment, worshipping
nature’s bones of stone.

Wanted to know who danced
to the flute while you slept
through the death time of winter.

One primordial morning
your memory showed you
the sacred hazel, invoked
by poets and seekers.

You asked him to be spared
the shedding until he grew tired
of your begging.

Do you know now? No flute,
no dance. Just winter's
unforgiving hold. Frozen
your gesture of seeking favours,
you lost your power of giving.

Life and Death Tree

Found in Triassic era fossils
from 200,000,000 years ago, the yew survived
our planet’s climatic changes. It connects
to those who went before.

Yew wood was used for spears, spikes, staves,
long bows, sacred carvings, magic wands.
Arrows were tipped with yew poison.

Powerful protection against evil, the yew
is the bringer of dreams and other-world journeys,
the source of stillness, herald of death,
of new beginnings, transformation, rebirth.

The tree once sacred to Hecate
formed Druid  groves, marked blind springs,
and leyline crossings.

Symbol of the afterlife.

The early Christian priests, while denying
the old gods, would yet build their churches
within the Druid's sacred circles.

A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm lives and works in Lima, Peru. Author of two novels and a poetry collection (TANGENTS) published in 2011 in the UK, well over 100 of her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in a good two dozen US poetry reviews as well as some print anthologies, and Diane Lockward’s The Crafty Poet. She won third price in in the 2009 Margaret Reid Poetry Contest for Traditional Verse (US), was semi-finalist in the Naugatuck poetry contest 2012/13 and has been a finalist in several GR contests, winning it in October 2014, a new poetry collection is in the process of publication in the US.

Rose Mary Boehm - In a Straightjacket

Tunnels without air.
Droplets of night sweat
roll like mercury. Merge
with the brook

at the bottom of the iron
leg on a creaking bedstead.
The white iguana extends
his five long fingers and closes
his eyes. Feeling his way

along my thigh. The angel
with wooden wings claps
on the green mosquito net.
Turns back, aims its long beak
at me. Storks bring babies,
do they not?

The fevers came early this
year. Where are my arms?
The face that stares
through the almost
opaque window panes

is divided into small pixels.
Morning is nothing here
and the moon barge hangs
somewhere on that branch

grinning like the Cheshire Cat.
The iron grids promise permanence.






A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm lives and works in Lima, Peru. Author of TANGENTS, a poetry collection published in the UK in 2010/2011, her recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in a good two dozen US poetry reviews (online and print).

Rose Mary Boehm - The Cretan Witch / Dover to Canterbury

The Cretan Witch

Zene was born on Crete. The sailor
Dimitris had brought her to Cyprus, his earth.
In the village they all recognized her for what she was.
Had she not plucked Phokas’ son from certain death?
Next she’d danced. An offering to the old gods.
When young Yorgos made eyes at her daughter,
Zene had looked at him. When he died of the fever,
she had picked up a chicken by the neck, sliced off
its head with the knife she always carried
in her apron’s pocket, and bathed her
wooden doorstep in the gushing blood.
Soon Zene's beautiful daughter just faded away.

Today she wears the big black dress made from silk
for the holy day when they remember
the dead. Tables bend under the weight
of kolifa, haloumi and black olives.
Today is the day of All Souls.




Dover to Canterbury

We'll soon pass the spot where I
see her every time. Not once has she missed.
Started to call her Emma.

The rain whips against
smeared windows. I strain
to peer into the night.

Perhaps she had bathed in
the arrogance of wealth,
the handsomeness of knowing
her place. Couldn't have been
more than about twenty-five.

One day I ask in the pub.
Drive to the estate.
The manor and grounds hidden
behind a gnarled, leafless overgrowth.
Scale the crumbling wall.

An anemic light from a dying
autumn moon haloes a woman. I follow.
Her long hair barely catches the weak light.

Her white gown billowing in the breeze
she hovers near the train lines.
Sparks spew into thick black.

A locomotive riots closer and bucks
when brakes screech it to a sudden
halt. In glowing white a woman
lies under the unforgiving wheels.

I tried to rescue her one hundred years
too late. But she knew I was watching.

A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm lives and works in Lima, Peru. Author of TANGENTS, a poetry collection published in the UK in 2010/2011, her recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in a good two dozen US poetry reviews (online and print).

Rose Mary Boehm - Hag of the Mist - Bean Sidhe / There are things in ditches

Hag of the Mist – Bean Sidhe

During the darkest months of the year,
overhanging the wild Atlantic waves,
the old ruined castle of Dunluce,
sitting on its rock above the green sea water
of the Antrim coast. Wail of the Banshee,
sound of the hollow wind, mourning
Ireland's want through her bitter loss
the scattered Chieftains of the Gael.

Her thin scream is caoine, is ‘keening’.
Long, red frizz and very pale skin.
Old woman with stringy, gray hair,
rotten teeth and fiery red eyes.
Shapeshifter. The washer woman
cleans bloody rags on a river shore.

King James I of Scotland
murdered soon after he met
a strange Irish seer.

Aware of a human’s watching,
the banshee disappears into the mist
with a fluttering sound
and the cry of the barn owl.

There are things in ditches

The storm springs upon us with sudden
ferocity. Branches lash the air, tree trunks sigh.
Pears from the trees by the road
splutter onto asphalt, and into ditches
which will soon be running rivers.

The first heavy drops of rain.
We count the seconds between lightning and thunder.
I am soaked through.
My skin contracts in fear and excitement.

We wade barefoot into the ditches
in the full knowledge that we’ll be devoured
by whatever lives and squishes up from the bottom
between our toes, those soft round bodies
we know hide under the mud because
we tread on their wet-grass-like feelers,
and—Sir Galahads all–collect as many
of the squashed pears as we can carry.






A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm lives and works in Lima, Peru. Author of TANGENTS, a poetry collection published in the UK in 2010/2011, her recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in a good two dozen US poetry reviews (online and print).