Remains
These are cloudlands or snowfields,
rain comes with devils of dust
scattered in fire, blistering to chill
the Sleeping Woman's Aztec skull
in the Pleiades, photoglyphic
under bedsheets, the smoke
and contour of obsidian night, glinting,
a skeleton inside an Indian cloth.
Down the gallery of the dead
to the Palace of the Moon, her brain
within a crystal skull, the shifting face
behind a face; within a puma's mouth;
boneless priests have tombs here.
I took to the stairs inside a ziggurat,
winding diamond-wise to the rooftop.
Condor-priests tricked in feathers
wore down these steps. Human-sacrifices
flickered before the headsman.
An urn ready for their dust
back of scarab-faced demon, head-dresses
of lizard-wattled sun-rays,
hands in submission, a child's head
in a snake's jaws. Proud Indian faces,
black clay skulls; replicas
that cheapjacks now palm off
on the uninitiated...
Page(s) 16
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