Monsoon
Heat was a clinging film in Kovalam.
In July the sky was turbulent grey
tumbling around a volcanic sun.
Rain on the sea was heavy:
a series of infinite explosions
torn from the sky like Velcro.
Every so often that sun thumped down
burning vision to halos.
Sand became mud, mud became powder
baking under foot
over and over.
On lush leaves, roots, palms and shoots,
water’s thin veil diminishes fast
and boils to invisible vapour.
As a silver orb shrinks on a lizard’s tongue,
drips’ spattering meniscuses
smack into dry sand,
and soon under quick sun
recede into waxy heat or tumble to nothing.
Noon in my room’s silence
I dream to the fan’s slice
and touch the heat being pushed down.
My bed is an under-tow
pulling me from stagnant walls,
down through earthy sheets
to where the Arabian sea
and Indian Ocean meet;
slopping in cool flux.
A grey brown fluid membrane,
swaying, waiting
for the inevitable cataclysmic penetration
of hot, explosive rain.
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