Spider Veins

By Conyer Clayton

Warning as
imagined body.
 
Body as
sign-post.
 
Yield then
yield again.

---

Admitted

By Conyer Clayton

Peace is a well-
conditioned body, fit
 
to shoulder hospital
beds and ice chips.
 
Fibres often lie.
Effective muscle contracts
 
to avoid conflict.
Quick cell turnover.
 
Balanced hormones.
No, your glands aren't swollen.
 
They're just the right size
to inhabit the world.
 
Unresolved relationships clog pores
and closure enables blood flow.
 
Intangibles have meaning
as bodily function.
 
They are as important
as the space they take.
 
How do I
breathe again?
 
Look.

---

Conyer Clayton is an Ottawa-based artist who aims to live with compassion, gratitude, and awe. Her most recent chapbooks are Trust Only the Beasts in the Water (above/ground press, 2019), / (post ghost press, 2019), Undergrowth (bird, buried press, 2018) and Mitosis (In/Words Magazine and Press, 2018). She released a collaborative album with Nathanael Larochette, If the river stood still, in August 2018. She won Arc's 2017 Diana Brebner Prize, performs sound poetry with Quatuor Gualuor, and writes reviews for Canthius. Her debut full length collection of poetry, We Shed Our Skin Like Dynamite, is forthcoming in Spring 2020 with Guernica Editions.