Sally Carr
Bacillus
In that last, unexpected
paragraph, Camus warns
how the plague, dormant for years
in furniture and linen-chests,
never quite disappears, may rise
again to send out its rats.
History-book scourge, cholera:
the Crusades, the Crimea,
endemic still in India.
In Aigue Morte, white
and glinting on the Camargue,
the returning knights died
of a local mal aria. Spores,
viruses, bacteria,
they shift tenancy,
build resistance, little
by little take new ground.
Too late, perhaps, we’ve learnt
the sanctity of blood,
the purity of water,
how we must net and seal
this vessel of fluids that’s
our thin wine-skin of a body,
so easily corrupted.
A warm lake edge filling
with faeces. Desperation.
The perfect conditions.
Or a city where scavengers
pick amongst the syringes,
dressings, cultures, swabs
in unincinerated waste
behind the hospital,
find something to sell on.
Page(s) 56-57
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