Triboluminescence
Some diamonds start to glow when rubbed,
fluorescing blue or red. This can happen in cutting,
crimson running along the sharpest edge.
Band-Aid wrappers also exhibit this property:
the glassy paper sparking the electric blue
of a train slipping in the wet, although a plaster
will never do on wounds as deep as these.
Sugar, fatally white, gives off the light of dreams
ground or broken in the dark. Opened envelopes
prove to be full of storms, the violet flicker
of heat lightning along the horizon.
And the ceremonial spirit rattles of the Ute
hold crystals of quartz that glimmer through
translucent amber hide as they clash together.
They slowly gather dust in the glass drums
of museums, with the language that named them.
Restless, unsated despite all we swallow,
our tribe takes no advice from spirits. And yet
we long for answers, so when skin is touched
roughly or gently and begins to shine,
we need to find new words in explanation.
Page(s) 30
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