NOLI MI TANGERE 

Cast out from the city with her dead
Child, her dark conscience
Paralysed both her hands.
The adultress turned her prison
Pages with guilt-laden hands.
Like prowling nocturnal rodents,
Her lover’s reproaches gnawed
At her with the pains of remorse.
She yelled in her cell, to him,
Until her mind became an empty
Parchment. Noli mi tangere.

Dr. Emily Bilman is London’s Poetry Society Stanza representative and hosts poetry meetings and seminars in her home in Geneva.  Her poetry book in French is entitled La rivière de soi. Poems are published in The London Magazine, Hunger Mountain, Offshoots VII & XII, Orbis, Poetry Salzburg Review, Iodine, and The San Diego Annual 2014, Aois 21 Annual in America and The Inspired Heart Vols. 1 & 2, & 3, and Ygdrasil in Canada. Two academic books, The Psychodynamics of Poetry and Modern Ekphrasis were published in 2010 and 2013. Her most recent poetry books are A Woman By A Well and Resilience. The reviews can be read on the Troubador/Matador UK website and on http://www.mciwritershouse.com/emily-bilman.html