Robert Seatter
Paintcharts
The names are spells:
duck eggs warm and held in the hand,
a twist of glass found somewhere on a beach
or a cough drop you suck for hours against your tongue
like a hard shiny bead.
They are the taste of memory
scratched out of the dark -
the way that fireworks came.
In the house I paint them for days and days
till all my muscles ache: shoulder, neck,
a wrist that twitches at night against the pillow.
They will not let me sleep:
blue cornfields moving brushstroke on brushstroke,
the sea a weight of red and terracotta
that stains my toes at the edge of the sand.
I feel them with my fingertips
in cracks and holes - the thickness of egg yolk.
I trail their footprints across the stairway.
I know that any moment now
I'll open the door,
step into their light - ceilings balanced
on a long, white breath, purple cat purring
from a blue armchair, the radio droning blurred
orange voices from a distant room.
Page(s) 53
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