the poet
Poet, performer and singer-songwriter Chloe Victoria Gorman blends beauty with darkness in everything she writes. Inspired by myth, magic, folklore and the gothic, her poetry has been published by Black Bough Poetry, Ice Floe Press, Analogies & Allegories Literary Magazine and Pink Plastic House – A Tiny Journal. She's performed at the Cheltenham Poetry Festival, Cheltenham Literature Festival and Dracula Returns to Derby, and been a featured poet at Cardiff's Big Words @ Tiny Rebel. Chloe has an MA in professional writing from Falmouth University, and is one half of award-winning band Saint Senara.
the poems
Memento Mori
A gleam of bone
Shines in the grey-gold.
A row of corvids, funeral-plumed,
Observe the ritual.
The god-folk think it macabre
To carry death around like a prize,
But this memento mori,
Reminds me that I am still alive.
Certain, I am wintered.
Body barren, fruitless, a haunting of memories.
But when the pale horse comes knocking,
I will sing.
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Cypress & Pine
For Andrew
Moon-pulled
as a tide
he is unsteady
on a smooth path
where sand does not shift underfoot.
Where stars offer no direction.
Where wind is just
weather.
No hand can hold an ocean,
yet he is
salt-steeped.
Cypress and pine do not grow in this molten
black earth.
Silence
I can cope
with the screaming.
The screaming means
there is fight in her
still.
Breath,
still.
She will not go quietly.
It is the silence.
Grave-quiet.
Grief-quiet.
Descending like a snowdrift.
And I would starve them all
to hear her scream again.
Publishing credits
Memento Mori: Black Bough Poetry Christmas/Winter
Anthology (Vol. 6)
Cypress & Pine / Silence: exclusive first publication by iamb