" title="Brittle Star Carol DeVaughn
Hag 
Carol DeVaughn reading Hag 
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The bag lady’s got us fooled
by her gabbling, her toothless grin
and lunatic gaze, the paraphernalia
of her ways – the perfect cover
for a goddess of sea foam who
once stood naked on-the-half-shell.
She knows she can be Venus again
so bides her time with the trappings
of her street gear. She’s in no hurry
to change her clothes, her hair, her skin.
She’ll sit for a while longer
in her bulbous body, her rotund form,
on her makeshift throne of newspaper
bundles with virgins’ robes, witches’ herbs
and angel hair, hold court with the Furies.
She’s not waiting to be kissed by anyone.
At twilight she becomes the city’s
balance, her ancient spine pivotal
to the weighing up of things. She's
bound herself with layers of material
from millennia of mothering, conjuring,
whoring, healing, feeling – she’s fed
a multitude. At midnight she’s visited
by all the Marys, who hail her,
The Giantess, in all her guises.
Page(s) 36-37
magazine list
- Features
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- 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
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- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
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- 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