Necropolis

By Bradley McIlwain


The sun dies,
turning
modern rooms
to tombs

ready
for embalming.
Absence of light
shudders

the hand, or
strengthens it;
in the dark,
I feel

for the razor, dig my
blade
beneath the skin,
exposing lump size bites 

and think:
this is how
Carnarvon
must have died.

Dust turns the
mouth dry.
In the heat

I am a corpse,
watery
and forgetful.
Beetles screech

beyond
the floorboards,
summoning kings –
here, in the desert,

nights bite at bone.
Somewhere, along
the Nile,
Isis swallows 

her brother’s magic.
In dreams,
I taste her curses
on my forehead,

travelling down
my fevered brain.

Bio

Necropolis previously appeared in Bradley's chapbook, Visiting Hours, self-published in 2012. Copies are available for download in an e-book format and in print. Bradley McIlwain lives in Ontario, Canada. His micro-chapbook, Holding On, can be enjoyed online as a free download at the Origami Poems Project. Bradley’s latest collection of poems, Elementals (IOWI, 2015) is now available on Amazon. He is the editor of Buried Horror.