black art
I had forgotten the river runs near.
Your estrangement sends out all your black presences.
If I open the window a notch,
the walls when I come are hung with spiders.
My shoe is soon covered with their corpses, my sole.
The light attracts moths, the melancholy
of butterflies. They agitate the shade and where they settle
squash too amenably, fleshing the walls.
Sick to death, I lie
but am summoned by the fluttering of wings.
I jump up, switch on the light, lift up my hands
in horror against the bat, screaming
round and round me, the paranoia
of a lark. I fly to window, crouching, its squeamish
wings vulva against my face, I throw it wide open
and it is gone. I shut the window.
I will wake by lady migraine, if I sleep or not.
It is worse.
Somewhere you have flooded a zoo,
or released an aquarium.
My years without you
are wreathed with pythons, running with invisible tarantulas.
Look, there is black powder on the stair.
Somewhere you are making up your face.
A bottle breaks leering across my throat.
Somewhere your scent is putting on evening.
Look, there is a lithe black garter-
snake sidling across the floor.
Somewhere your thighs are fascinating, held.
I cut off its head; it does not bleed.
A leopard roars.
Somewhere your voice caresses, claws.
My neck and back are eaten with army ants.
Somewhere you are kissing another's nape.
Feel, I am burning with fever.
Somewhere your tears are falling coldly.
There is no amulet for this spell
you have not put upon me.
Everything in this room you have touched.
Page(s) 11-12
magazine list
- Features
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- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
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- 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