Paul Sutton
L'Enfant
Baby faced killer of the third arrondissement
specialities violet old ladies
leaving a trace of cologne on the fingers.
In his proud possession
the Legion of Honour
one previous owner
a hero of the Republic
found gagged and starved in an attic
eyes picked out and eaten by a skeletal cat.
Will the plane trees talk with me?
I see them from my cell
restless, their movements
animating each brick
framing the canal
the purple twilight
tensing then dropping
like a strangled body
falling from my hands.
Tomorrow is the blade
a sensation speculatively compared
to cold water on the neck.
Why do they place it so low on the ground?
To bend then lose your head
requires an insulting collaboration
I would never have demanded
from any of my victims.
Let the crowd roar
the wine stained old crones
the whores with sawdust in their hair.
I have lived, they never will.
The dawn twitches my nostrils;
one last Gitane monsieur
who would deny this cherubic boy?
Page(s) 29
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