Lucien Freud's Welfare benefits supervisor
Anorectic girls may fear
this model nakedly sprawled
over a chair, or curled,
formless and fat on a bed.
Formless? Can one so describe
breasts, belly, thighs
worked by hogshair brush
into hummocks and clefts
veined by marbly blues?
Worried women (of whom
I am one) may inspect
her streaky browns and reds,
carcass tones that bring
flesh alive, and be consoled –
for here is a woman not squeezed
out of a tube or only built up
by a knife. She let herself go
and flesh with a will of its own
took a different route from the one
most bodies take to move
beyond the physical into a new
dimension, a field of tumuli
where self and flesh become
the question you can't quite frame.
this model nakedly sprawled
over a chair, or curled,
formless and fat on a bed.
Formless? Can one so describe
breasts, belly, thighs
worked by hogshair brush
into hummocks and clefts
veined by marbly blues?
Worried women (of whom
I am one) may inspect
her streaky browns and reds,
carcass tones that bring
flesh alive, and be consoled –
for here is a woman not squeezed
out of a tube or only built up
by a knife. She let herself go
and flesh with a will of its own
took a different route from the one
most bodies take to move
beyond the physical into a new
dimension, a field of tumuli
where self and flesh become
the question you can't quite frame.
Nadine Brummer’s first full collection, Half Way to Madrid, was published by Shoestring Press in 2002.
Page(s) 57
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