Shannon Barry
poetry
Shannon Louise Barry is a Canadian-South African writer, artist, and cryptid currently based in Glasgow. Her practice attempts to bridge the spaces between the self and reality with a focus on eco-surrealism. Her work has been featured in places such as Existere, filling Station, EVENT, and Freefall, and she’s an upcoming resident at The Cromarty Arts Trust. Shannon is currently undertaking the MLitt in Modernities at the University of Glasgow.
Red Sun
It’s nearly raining.
My lungs fill with rust
chip and pierce
my shoulder blade and spine.
Acrid smoke cling
to my first new bed
mute perfumed hydrangeas.
Closed window, shuttered blind
heated pane magnifier
scent of iron in still air.
If I let in the breeze
I will inhale fumes
lie flat and pray
heat won’t find me.
Unhealed cut on my tongue
drink onion vinegar from the jar
teeth crunch on invisible soil.
Plastered bricks melt
I crumble with them
carbon in my bones
fossilize with ferns out back.
Who will dig me up?
It’s nearly raining.
It’s nearly raining.
It’s nearly raining.
It’s—
‘Red Sun’ was written in a delirium of the 2022 heatwave in Glasgow. The poem is an automatic response to the increasingly severe weather events over the past years due to climate change. I lived in Calgary, Alberta, for twenty years, where wildfires drifting over the Rocky Mountains occur earlier and more frequently each year.