David Barnett
Lost Child
Along the promenade
he stampedes, between the sea
he knelt on – a buoy,
a pout, a jelly-fish –
and a down, pocked,
cropped, so often trod.
He bounces off the bodies,
soft and odd, that wheeze
round the tulip-beds
and monkey puzzle trees.
A screech clots in him.
It’s older than a boulder’s
or a fen’s, than folds
smudged by the thumbs
of fern and flame and by
the mothers in their smocks
who crib him with the spongy
arms of their laughter.
Just a hungry cub
snuffles at the entrance
to a cave, hung
with bats and barred by basilisks.
When he’s found, he’s pig iron
stiff, a money spider
who laps the blood from tales
of dwarfs and the siblings
tethered to a gingerbread
hut in the wood
that’s furthest from his permafrost.
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