Isobel Dixon
L’uomo che Cammina
See Giacometti’s walking man,
all narrow limb, all loping leg
and angled heel. What sadness
populates that elongated head,
that aching ink-trace form?
His body leans a little, pressed
by wind or weight. Some unseen freight
upon that daddy-long-legs frame.
There’s no more than a hint of him:
his arms hang hesitating down,
the torso scribbled, fish-bone frail and stretched.
Forget this yielding flesh,
these so-unwanted curves,
the handful, B-cup breasts.
See Giacometti’s man,
his lonely, wish-bone man:
I am that man, walking bereft.
all narrow limb, all loping leg
and angled heel. What sadness
populates that elongated head,
that aching ink-trace form?
His body leans a little, pressed
by wind or weight. Some unseen freight
upon that daddy-long-legs frame.
There’s no more than a hint of him:
his arms hang hesitating down,
the torso scribbled, fish-bone frail and stretched.
Forget this yielding flesh,
these so-unwanted curves,
the handful, B-cup breasts.
See Giacometti’s man,
his lonely, wish-bone man:
I am that man, walking bereft.
Isobel Dixon was born in South Africa, studied in Edinburgh and now works in London as a literary agent. Her poetry has been widely published in South Africa, where she won the Sanlam Literary Award 2000 for her collection Weather Eye (Carapace, 2001). Her poems have also appeared in the Unfold pamphlet, the British Council New Writing anthologies (8, 10 and 11), and in Poetry Salzburg's Imagination in a Troubled Space: A Contemporary South African Reader (2004).
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magazine list
- Features
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- 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