Ruth O'Callaghan
Cloths
One for the damp and one for the buff:
the beeswax crimps the nose of the child
watching as dulled wood emerges sheened,
the dirt dissolved and the firelight flickering
a mirror where a single column of elms vanish
into the horizon and a swing skews, its frayed rope
a thread from breaking. Here the hedge is broken
by a child crawling through, wood-mould, green-mould
clinging to knees and his clothes chafing
while he chalks each elm then every other, one in three,
five and his eyes narrow and a dust of snow
turns into frozen fields and the marks he made fade.
Now there are no ashes on ice to rough the path
to the house where a smudge of darkness presses
against the window as an old man discards his cloths,
his breath blearing a mirror that shows a child,
a child, a child dimininishing.
Page(s) 81
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