'Wheat' and 'Out of a balloon'

by Victoria Spires

Wheat 

Now all the golds, parsed 

through the slow syntax of summer heat 

are leached of their old meaning

and I am tongue-tied—

The train, a trance state, running through me

What have you done with the things 

I knew of myself? 

These tides of evenings. The fields’ 

pale blue-grey, a baptism in waiting

I am full of a waiting I can't describe—

The next time, and the next time and the next

time until the turning point 

is erased

Out of a balloon 

Then joy comes at you, pin tack

sharp, from somewhere. It must 

be the way the night falls

so gently, like warm air out of a 

balloon: bobbed aloft by many

hands of laughter rising up 

to meet it. Earlier, you climbed the

church tower, to be one rooftop 

among a city. Your pigeon 

heart startled by the bell's

insistent now. Tonight, the clock

face is a stand-in moon.

VICTORIA SPIRES is a Forward-nominated poet. Recent publications include The Marrow, The Little Review, Poetry Ireland Review. In 2025 she won the Alpine Fellowship Poetry Prize and placed Third in the Rialto Competition. She was a finalist in the Mslexia Women's Poetry Competition 2025 and long-listed in the Propel Cambridge Poetry Prize 2026. Her debut pamphlet Soi-même was published by Salo Press in 2025 (now sold out).

Art by Se Lyn Lim