Alistair Wisker
Soft City
Just a grey-brown street but
with near-red roofs
a complete shop and green bits
wrestling the earth for dear life
conversation hard to credit
like for instance when Flo
calls me Alabaster
- if they come I’m ready
Alabaster, she says
and shows me in private
her museum-like shed
and an axe big and sharp
as herself
the sky outside is heavy gasps
of cloud, staring in
at the bosom like a bolster
she’s got, a heart of gold and brine
just this but it’s mine -
I made it to leave and return to
Alistair Wisker is now a tutor in creative writing at Ruskin College Oxford after many years at the University of East Anglia in Norwich. Publications include studies of Nathanael West (Macmillan), T.S. Eliot (Hodder), Robert Creeley, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and William Carlos Williams. He has been editor of Flame and Spokes poetry magazines. His poetry has been published in two slim volumes and many magazines including Ambit, Delta, Poetry Review, The Rialto, Stand and The World.
Page(s) 59
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