Marine
Night engagement
In a northern waste;
Waves lap through broken ice
And the guns
Illuminate
A sculptured form
In accidental pose.
Two soldiers; one faceless now
And cooling fast,
Occupy
A frozen plot
On the empty beach.
Above the thud of distant shells
Splintered words
Escape
The parted lips
Of the other man
Who bears the arched bulk
Of that dead weight
Alone.
His own life ebbs
To a dark shadow
On the ice. With battle-lit eyes
He jerks his head
And meets
The eyeless gaze.
Drawn from his mind
By pain, like jagged rocks,
A few last images
Appear.
You, on top? No
This weight above. Cold.
Her body cold. After. Two kids.
Second, not mine.
Her face
Paid for that.
Not on top -
Against the wall. Belfast pub.
Arms pinned.
Feeling.
Can’t feel it.
He felt it -
That queer. Boot in. For the Queen.
The broken glass.
Caring
Nothing. Those blacks
Deserved it all.
Not like us. No place. Mates ran.
Army wrong.
Why me?
Nicked for sod all.
They asked me.
I said never. Share my body heat with one of them
Even in death?
Never.
They asked. This weight.
Share my heat.
No. None. So cold. Move.
No, just me. Me. Heavy. So
Unjust.
Page(s) 7-8
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