Nancy Mattson
Ceremony of Eels
A winter break, a week without
the shallownine to dryfives for me;
all my friend from Lapland wants
is anything but snow, dark, trees.
We walk slow and local, inhale
the barny smells of cheeses,
gaze at pig snouts and tails
dried scarlet at the market, flinch
at eels writhing in the eel pie
and mash shop window, each
constricted by a pale white hairy
hand, the body twitches
while a set of pale white hairy fingers
grips the knife, aims
quick at the point where bare
neck would be if bulbous head
were any part of eelness.
It is not. The eel is shorter
dead, but still a long thing,
now sliced along a thin line
from blooded top to tapered tail
by windowed hands abstracted
from the eelmonger’s torso,
disembodied by his task, matter, fact.
Page(s) 42
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