New Poetry by Abigail George

Stranger made of flesh and Nineveh

(for Ambronese)

    Burn bright tonight tigers inside
    this room. Bring me courage so
    delicate. The sensation of falling. Jerusalem. Moses. Desert country.
The ancient knowledge of the importance of
    family. Scarlet thread to patchwork
    the burning tapestry of my soul.
I’ve been wounded before all of this.

I’m crying and I don’t know why I’m crying.

    Living with illness has done this
    to me. Coming home from the sea
    we have a shared interest for the
rural. Obituary. Sympathy for grassroots and
    community. Proof that singing in
the rain could not dampen our spirits. Our prayer
    for the eternity of the grace of the
    tomorrow-land of mountain-roots.
The blue light persists. Exists only to promise
    moral scorching. A wasteland of
    gathering stages of spring decay and
    pollen falling like dandelion clocks
all around. Such is the strange nature of illness
    and the authentic mud season in the
    garden. Leaves lyrical. We’re the
    hope. The soul on fire almost spiritual.
    All I see is a field that burns me up.
    Flowers survive in the moonlight.

Anointed with perfume and music schools.
After dreamy-loneliness and death comes a

    world of concern. Grief brings with it
    silence. Love that can move planets.
    All writers are poets in their own way.
    The rain saved me. It always saved
    me. Breathed life back into me. I’m
    only in need of a survival-kit. Little-fed
    waves of afternoon sunlight. Believe
    in me is all that I ask of the men and

    women in my life. Fish swim towards
the nature of life. The psychological compass of its
    wet valleys and runaway plankton.
    Picturesque sea don’t forget about me.
    My strong limbs swimming against
the current. It is wild out there. A church.

Woman with the graceful neck you must love me.


- Abigail George 2017

Pushcart Prize nominee for her fiction "Wash Away My Sins", Abigail George is a South African blogger, essayist, poet, short story writer and aspirant novelist. She is the recipient of writing grants from the National Arts Council in Johannesburg, the Centre for the Book in Cape Town and ECPACC in East London. She briefly studied film and television production at the Newtown Film and Television School in Johannesburg. Her literary work has been published in various anthologies, numerous times in print in South Africa and in e-zines based in Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, Finland, the UK, the United States, and across African in Nigeria and Istanbul, Turkey.

This year her work has appeared and is forthcoming from Dying Dahlia Review, Fourth and Sycamore, Gnarled Oak, Hamilton Stone Review Spontaneity, Off the Coast, Prong and Posy, Spontaneity, and Snow Jewel.