Making Cider with Joan of Arc
by and published in Edition Eight of Pomegranate
In the morning we picked apples;
Tesco bags, bulked and over-spilling,
weaving snaily trails, squashed underfoot,
exploding into pieces on the lino.
I wished I spoke French – better still,
Provencal – but words paled
as you fished out a sword,
smashing swiftly at their heads.
Their ripe hearts opened
spitting pips; they skittered
into corners, lodging
in the kitchen cat like ticks.
Pressing them was easy;
clanking in full armour
you just rolled around the floor,
laughing at your stickied hair.
We sang songs of Normandy
and strained off the pulp
through your helmet’s slotted grill,
collecting juice inside your metal shoes.
Slopping them to foaming buckets
in the garage, you snapped off an iron toe
and watched the nectar gush
among the yeast.
It brewed quickly,
the demi-johns popping premature
and foaming fizzes bloated out the top
each bubble eyeing up an empty bottle.
I sent a crate across the channel;
put in a couple extra for the guards.
Mark Burns Cassell
Mark Burns Cassell recently graduated from the University of Leeds with first class honours. He is now taking at least a year out from thinking about careers and further education; he is moving to Cumbria for the summer, then to Brighton, whilst making writing his main focus. Mark is currently developing his skills of writing poetry using more basic, formal conventions – sonnets, quatrains – Making Cider with Joan of Arc reflects this.