Robert Berry
The Pier
late afternoon is
wet with light
Two fishermen stroll
the brawling surf
A lizard
decorates a sun-boiled stump
Time has settled on the pier’s
dentistry of rotted timber
its bicycles
fishing pots and
Stinking bait
In the idle swell
Sunburnt men
dangle rods
Two mating dragonflies hover
Prehistorical as the
horned monsters
anglers pull in
Reefed up below
Are boats under black canvas
and gulls lashed
to the rocking water
At the curve of the world
Sun is a spitting apocalypse
Stood close to pier’s end
A man scans the horizon
for a morsel of sail
and tosses a hissing butt
in the heartbroken ocean
Listening to the
Slosh and
amen of the sea
Page(s) 26-27
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