Literary Vegan

These words run immortal. Red-ribboned bookmarks meet them, rivers journeying through earth and to the sky in hot words, released in breath. Bound temporarily between paper covers; they rain italic  along blue-gold evening fields —  whispered over the flowers given by those who know, or try to say, what love is. Never dead; fireflies in bookshop dust, everything I said of us is echoed, overlooking the aging lake — with pages closed, letters still dip and reflect the sun.  Inspired by Our Infinite Fates by Laura Steven   C. LJ Ireton 2025

I'm nearly home. The pencil rose sky deepens then crescendoes with the honking sound of ducks and their echo. I spin to locate them and watch them rise heads low, bodies straight - eager shapes, discordant shadows. They call - leaving their kicked-up ripples behind, in black water. I'm silent, but my longing to distance the day from my returning self is just as loud.   C. LJ Ireton, 2025

I sink under the St David's sun - teasing yellow promise and primrose. Is it over now; the disconnection between bone and flower? I expose my stomach and toes to the hovering hot star  that's been haunting my sleep,  and set my arms free  from holding myself through cold, glass rain, unthinking weeks.  It will be a slow knitting; the time it takes for seeds, opening their eyes in the dark, to extend their arms of anemone - and I'm still numb under the divide. Spirit, wake, forgive the sky - the heated epiphanies stir once again in the soil -  I want to meet them barefoot, my skin alight and feeling.  Copyright LJ Ireton, 2025

There is a sin-like storm seconds away. Outside, the wind seems to swipe at steel and tree alike - the smoke of centuries  reveals a cold, petulant heart kicking at the air. I reach an arm out to the steadily breathing ground:  the animals near me. Their foreheads of fur are striped fields of wheat, pampas, poppies snoring in the sun. I trace one line of Eden with a slowed heartbeat - a fingertip of a vision, but the gale is shrieking now and I must hold the memory of grass.  LJ Ireton, 2025 

I raised the bunched daisies, dahlias and peach-pink gerberas; unassuming, with burgundy eyes to the moon. A reintroduction - we had all spent the day under artificial light and in the absence of roots grounded ourselves again In lace reflection,  star to star. On this icy night  after being on show to people here we are; silent, grateful wolves petal jaws, faces silver.  LJ Ireton, 2024

Green grace, creature air is a memory in this percussive smoke of a place. The snail, the pied wagtail brave the pavement; breathing spirals and stripes with eyes - a dip and slide of redemption smaller than my palm delicate, old world. LJ Ireton, 2025