LP of a Nightingale: Bobst Library
Pulled into the raw grey day, collar up for cold,
armed with nervous petulance, popgun of a sort.
Shove myself out double doors, MetroCard in hand.
You can only do the first time once.
Reluctant to touch what turns on
nightingale, nightingale that Callimachus,
liar, said sang on bloody battlefields.
Reluctant to end the almost heard,
moving to the song.
I drool on the disk the brisk man handed me,
dry the blob of spit which really spilled,
landing about where the terns turned.
No one sees. I count, recount
to get aright its luscious song and then it reels.
I find the nightingale is just a bird.
Tick I hear a sound almost "jug, jug",
Eliot almost kin. Perhaps it's better in the dawn.
Steal a warm gold pen, souvenir of crossing, imagined to
recorded. Crossing is what counted.
How can I explain? I could not die without nightingale.
And you, what have you left undone?
Page(s) 22
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The