Caroline Natzler
Remote
You lie in the bath these days,
quiet as driftwood
your long limbs dreaming,
fingers playing like seaweed over your flesh
over the lift of your stomach, waxen as a doll’s.
I watch how your breasts float, at home
in the water’s pale green billow
and I want to enfold you.
The stray ends of your hair are sucked with dark
water.
Only your face—too red, little scratches and bumps
as if the water’s withdrawn
and left exposed the dry unease of land.
And though your eyes engage me
I know if I were to lift your fingers, the strands of
your hair
to my mouth
they’d feel scratchy
smell faintly sour
and if I were to lean over and embrace you
your tail would lash me
heavy, scaley, spitting bubbles.
quiet as driftwood
your long limbs dreaming,
fingers playing like seaweed over your flesh
over the lift of your stomach, waxen as a doll’s.
I watch how your breasts float, at home
in the water’s pale green billow
and I want to enfold you.
The stray ends of your hair are sucked with dark
water.
Only your face—too red, little scratches and bumps
as if the water’s withdrawn
and left exposed the dry unease of land.
And though your eyes engage me
I know if I were to lift your fingers, the strands of
your hair
to my mouth
they’d feel scratchy
smell faintly sour
and if I were to lean over and embrace you
your tail would lash me
heavy, scaley, spitting bubbles.
Caroline Natzler teaches creative writing in London. Her collection, Design Fault, was published by Flambard in 2001.
Page(s) 7
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