Poetry from Sarah Wallis

Sarah Wallis is a poet with work published in a variety of small press magazines, and a playwright, most recently staged at the Ovation Awards in Halifax and the Gumption Centre in Bradford. 

Amygdala 

Little white house of fear, locked in your spiral cell

told to push at waves beyond

your patient ferry,

see the wall crash, and far away

the human concern keeps on at one chance

in a hundred, it keeps us on edge wonder-daring

a sky dive at death in an ocean rinsed shirt,

or a chilli pepper dress

a simple dance at nightmare, glass half empty

and the egg timer losing

hard won volcanic black sand.

Little house of hope, where egg before chicken

they count in, count out

the henhouse

inmates cluck at the air, strut surety, no fox here.

One little white wine spritzer (the tempting hostess)

and a fall so far

after years of abstinence

one dream voice on the side of fallen angels

the true Captain left to go down with the ship.

Little house of nerves bundled warm at skullback

under a long sail of hair,

dressed in ponytail, bun,

toupee concealing such vanity,

when the pattern is genetic

like the amygdala’s strength to withstand

the buffets of addiction.