My poem was inspired by this image of the Kunekune, a newly discovered Japanese demon. You can read all the contributions and the images that inspired them on Paul Brookes’ blog here.

Kunekune or the fear of paper

In a flat field of green shoots, waving stalks,
a bright unbroken sea, a tremulous shape,
a papery, boneless, limbed shape shivers,

papery and boneless and distant,
elusive as ghost people, paper storks,
mirages and miracles that stalk the dark.

Don’t look, they say, turn away.
That waving is not drowning,
but dancing on someone’s grave.

That fragile, fluttering body,
blind-eyed, death bone-white,
holds death in its fingerless hands.

These days, we fear those waving
to catch our attention, even boneless,
shivering sheets of paper.