A Lost Generation

  They burned the horse.
 Petrol across her fine ebony flanks.
 Swirls and curlicues of peacock, blue and green,
 shimmering, undulating in the setting sun.
 Her proud eyes, magnificent beneath whisper of soft lash.
 Unused to the whoops, the flaying belts, the gurriers kicking
 at her belly.
 Her heartbeat pushing the mackerel mane in and out. Out and in.
 Nickering with the cloying oils.
 She whinnied, shook herself, showering the boys
 with petrol drops.
 Her mane and tail like candle wick as she shrieked
 and bucked burnt hair on November wind.
 They no longer whooped.
 She watched them through the smoke,
 smouldering beside her.
 Skin sizzling and popping - unable to flick
 the equine fireballs from cloth and hair.
 And as she died, horsemeat to the gang,
 she found she had no pity.
 No sorry in her thud-thud, thud, quietened heart.
Horse doused in petrol and set alight

 ©Mari Maxwell

Knit One, Slip One, Pass the Slipped Stitch Over

Using the thumb method cast on 30
(35, 40, 45) stitches (according to size)
Then, keeping the tension correct, *Knit 2, Purl 2.*
Repeat *K2, P2* to the end of the row.
Maintaining the rib pattern, continue
until the finished work measures 8 (9,10, 11, 12) inches
(again according to size).
Alternatively, continue in pattern
until you find the work satisfying;
or until, with luck and a backer,
you make the Sundays and win the Turner Prize.
Admire the photographs, file your clippings;
talk a lot of arty, pseudo-feminism.
Say: ‘It is just a bit of a body‘.
Bore the bloody pants off the rest of us.
Says it's all art and 'craftivism'.
Really? Really?
Now cast off.
©Abigail Wyatt

Vaginal knitting