Michael Curtis
Down to Earth
From the sequence Weeks, to be published by Urban Fox Press, October 2007
Before I left for the coast
while the light was still dry
they assembled the scaffolding below me,
unwrapped white tubes from a white van
twisted them together, stopped up their hollowness.
Much worse were the camels
tethered to roadside scrub between sodden horses
to graze ragged embankments in the downpour
and too unsure of their place
to lift a head or notice my interest.
Circling the terrils
heritaged in pyramid, centres still warm,
slopes slowly greening in the November rain
as they waited to spill blood and memory, all I heard
was that he married at fifty but was a gymnast with blue eyes.
In the end it found me
as bouquets gathered to garnish the graves
in a sepulchral and monumental cemetery in the suburbs,
each bunch brimful with sadness
each flower more compassionate than the last
but determined to parade its blossom
just a little longer, keep another week of colour
before being tidied to the corner, removed and interred
in a littoral landfill below sea-level
or ploughed into mud to help break down the Flanders clay.
Page(s) 11
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