Poetry 3 June 2020 The Anthropocene A new poem from Pascale Petit. Getty Sign UpGet the New Statesman\'s Morning Call email. Sign-up A bride wears a train of three thousand peacock plumes She walks down the aisle like a planet trailing her seas every wave an eye shivering with the memory of the display how the trees turned to watch as the bird raised the fan of his tail – emerald forests bronze atolls lapis islands every eye a storm held in abeyance Pascale Petit is a French-born British poet. Her seventh book, Mama Amazonica, won the 2018 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize. Tiger Girl (Bloodaxe) is due to be published in September 2020. › Marieke Lucas Rijneveld’s The Discomfort of Evening: sly, surprising and singular This article appears in the 05 June 2020 issue of the New Statesman, We can't breathe