Nell Farrell
Sewerby Beach
Whatever sand there is lies buried under marker stones
bleached to a bone white radiance by sun and ozone.
The sepia of dried blood seaweed limbs,
hurled from their sockets, mark our path along the beach
and so we pick our way through sinews, scavenging.
Holding onto scarves against the wind,
we bend a knee for this or that memento;
chalk shapes, cold and smooth as bones whose holes
invite our fingers in. An Easter Island face. A heart,
curvaceous, worn and channelled as the real thing.
Like the backbeat of a low persistent drum the sea
unsettles rocks, uproots them, turns them over,
lets them fall like pebbles. A plastic buoy floats tangled
in an elongated skein of net and underneath this eerie sky
I knit them up into a skeleton, a skull.
Our trophies lie displayed along the dashboard
and shudder as the car moves off. The face is thrown
against the weathered chambers of the heart and listens
or an echo of the sea, the revolution of the blood,
the surge of life sustained, continuing.
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