Martha Street
Stone Soup
The woman drew water from the earth.
It chuckled and dazzled in the bucket
smelling of dark brown.
The woman plucked a stone
from the bare beach, satisfactory
in its roundness, saltiness and heft.
Striking flint she scratched up a fire
and seethed her stone. At first
it lurked at the bottom, but as the water fizzed
and sizzled, it began to slime with green slick;
it furred with moss, hairs sprouted,
turning the water rich as gravy, with weeds
wavering upward. Among their roots
flashed tiny crustaceans, tadpoles and fish.
Near midnight the woman yawned, pulled her apron
over her head against the starry wind, and saw,
scrabbling to the rolling surface, the first
homunculi. Eyes bulging and gills gasping
they clambered and slithered on the cauldron sides.
She meant to take a slotted spoon to their spawn
before they multiplied, but drowsiness intervened,
and by morning the hatchlings had scampered away.
The sun broke out like the yellow of an egg,
announcing the birth of the eighth day.
Page(s) 60
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