The Negative without the Print
In place of your lovely eye, a black spark,
gooseberry veins and fishbone lashes,
the tenderising kiss of the shark.
Strange how photographic negatives
can raise hair.
Look, the white spider with a plum for a face,
in the iron web. There, behind the jade pits,
coughing liquid sunshine from his throat,
strangled by the iron band. Wearing a gangster’s blank suit.
It’s the vicar.
It’s a filmic trick they never miss for a nuclear holocaust.
Softening it with comedy.
They start with farce. The baggy suit blowing off.
Negative, positive, negative. And some old X-ray of bones.
It’s a funfair.
As though everything white will be instant coal
and everything dark will glow.
As if the giant white cockroach will enjoy our negatives
and laugh like a drain at our snaps.
Ha ha look there.
Page(s) 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