John Barton
Manikins*
Still life: for you still
Always of the body, but a brief
Reprieve from the longueurs of a more hectic frameC
Two wooden figures drawn to scale, posed marionettes
So articulate in their nakedness they ache
To be real
Boys spooning, smooth chest against the grain
Of the back, riding
The heady, honey-soaked
Drumrolls of youthful lust, on the verge
Of drifting off, a few stray wood-shavings
Of conversation overheard
Before they let
GoC
Every chiselled, murmurous vacillation
Of your brush brought to heel
By their daydreaming
By books
Open and closed across
The flat, unvarnished plane of your workbench, its rough
Tan grain swirled and particular as a thumbprint
Gide=s Croydon (its ink-charged
Manifesto
An unfading sepia, its pent
Much-bent binding about to burst) lightly
Piled as if one more pillow on top of volumes
By Shakespeare and Michelangelo
Such browsed
Crescendos of desire cushioning the boys= stargazing
Lilliputian heads filled with vibratos
About love
While behind them the cast of a left hand is
Severed at the wrist, as if
From the arm of a priest during a holy
War, its whittled
Index and ring fingers crooked
In benediction
As they hold open a cautionary Book of Time, a sentence
Underscored somewhere midway
ThroughC
Notations for future work.
* Paul Cadmus (1904–1999), egg tempera on paper, 1951
Page(s) 280-282
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