Bat
A bat had died in the airing cupboard.
We found it when we were clearing out last month
from the house in Sancton. Unable to escape, when it died
it was preserved like a dried prune in the warmth.
The desiccated anatomy is still perfect: mainsail
ears, dinosaur head, the digits and membranes
of the wings, the radii, ribcage, feet, claws and tail.
It’s less than thumbsize, perhaps a Daubenton’s.
You would measure its weight
in apothecaries’ grains. A fragment of papyrus
recovered from sand, it’s difficult to handle, difficult to make out
the meaning of, like so many human occurrences.
I’m reminded of bog bodies, the cone-brown skins
of those put to death for a sacrifice
or punishment or some social difference.
They have re-emerged from the peat and the collective unconscious.
We keep the bat on tissues
in a small cardboard box on a shelf by the bed,
the bed we have made up with linen pillowcases
and bright cotton sheets from the airing cupboard.
Page(s) 40
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