Nell Farrell
Flamborough
Flat rocks tarred with seaweed
glisten in the wind.
The sea is midnight blue
and seagulls are the battered
Holy Ghost against it.
Vikings saw the flaked edge
of an arrow head
pointing thickly out to sea
when they named this place
and we are walking its indentations.
Jetties of chalk cliff
narrow as knives
where seabirds screech in desperation
to make themselves heard.
Our words are whipped away
like toffee papers
leaving us open mouthed,
abandoned, with no clues at all.
If I didn't know you well enough
to read your face
I would panic like the seagulls.
A carrier bag skims the cliff edge in fury
white and inflated, a storybook ghost
butting the backs of our legs as it flails.
The flowers here are ragged with the wind
but never turn their backs.
We get our breath back over egg and chips.
Seeing a map on the cafe wall
I wonder how far away
the conversation we couldn't have
has blown.
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