Anastasya Shepherd

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Category: Poetry

  • Monsters under-lit

    One of the main tasks of childhood is to learn how to deal with monsters.
    This is why dinosaurs are so fascinating for children –
    they are monsters, concrete and palpable.
    There is nothing human about them,
    they kill with teeth and claws, not words, greed and cowardice.
    They are easy, training monsters,
    a menace you can understand, a threat without ambivalence.
    What do you do if you meet a monster?
    Do you run?
    Do you fight?
    Do you train to be stronger than them?
    Do you learn to be smarter?
    After going to the Museum of Natural History
    and learning about T-Rex
    you couldn’t stop laughing:
    running around with your arms pressed into your sides,
    waving your hands feebly at chest-level,
    saying, ‘itty-bitty hands!’
    I think you chose the best option.
    I think you will be all right.

    —

    by

    ashepherd
    in

  • An observation

    White feathers litter the ground
    under the castle wall,
    torn out by doves
    fighting for nesting sites.

    —

    by

    ashepherd
    in

  • Walls

    Walls are designed to divide space.
    Here from there.
    Inside from out.
    Safe and familiar
    from dangerous and unpredictable.
    Me from you.

    I am walking up the winding staircase
    in an old castle.
    Castle walls are solid.
    Really solid.
    There is nothing metaphorical about them.
    They are rocks and bricks and mortar,
    built up over the centuries,
    fortified.
    These walls are very definite
    about keeping things out.
    They make me feel contained:
    warm, wooly-headed and slightly dizzy;
    like a sick bed –
    I am not at my best, but there is no need to be.
    The space of illness is small and manageable:
    eat, drink, sleep, stay alive…

    There is a light at the top of the staircase,
    it leads out onto the battlements.
    I am tired of climbing.
    The light at the top is too bright,
    the space – too large,
    the height – too vertiginous
    and I am already dizzy…

    I think I will sit here,
    rest
    and consider my options,
    half way between the dungeon and the battlements,
    well within the walls.

    —

    by

    ashepherd
    in

  • Word

    What’s in a word?
    A scream.
    A plan.
    A sword.
    A lulling song.
    An action and reward.
    A memory.
    A future.
    Why and what.
    What’s in a word?
    My world.

    —

    by

    ashepherd
    in

  • Why?

    ‘Why do it?’ as a question clips your wings
    and locks you in a cage of expectations.
    Don’t ask it.
    Ask: ‘Why not?’

    —

    by

    ashepherd
    in

  • Overkill

    An observation on metallurgy: if you make a safety net too rigid, it turns into a cage.

    —

    by

    ashepherd
    in

  • Border

    Water relentlessly grinding rocks into sand,
    finer and finer,
    until it cannot be supported
    and filters through
    into the depths.
    And there you are –
    right on the border;
    building castles out of sand
    and fortifying them with water.
    Amazingly, it works.

    —

    by

    ashepherd
    in

  • Words

    (Part of the image is from Dmitri Plavinsky – Word)

    Sticks and stones can break my bones,
    but words can re-define me.

    —

    by

    ashepherd
    in

  • Nightmare

    (Part of the image is from Kliment Redko – Uprising)

    If you want people to hear what you want to say, conceal what you want to say in what they want to hear.

    —

    by

    ashepherd
    in
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