Margaret Gleave
Mixed Media
When he was alive she got by,
a cardboard cut-out, a cliché; always
an echo of his wishes, a doormat
for his feet; now he’s dead, she’s left,
a blur ghosting
round emptiness.
Day by day, she hacks and chisels
corners and angles; peels off
the dark cracked glaze of years
to lay bare a collage of summer –
red hopscotch playtimes and green holidays;
she adds terracotta velvets stitched in umber silks
of dreams tissue-wrapped in drawers; she savours
toasted earth of Provençe, strokes
a full-blown moon crouching on Tuscan cypress;
she breathes warm oak caressed by incense
in Spanish churches.
The finished work sings, brighter
than thought and every space is filled
except the heart of things.
Page(s) 172
magazine list
- Features
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- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
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- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
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- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
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- 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