Maura Dooley
Into Thin Air
There were the early days
when you sat between her legs
squeezing the pink flesh
with its glaze of mud,
her tail switching across your face,
in air thick with her stink
of straw and milk.
Other times, when you plucked off
soiled sheets, heaved the dead weight
of dying flesh, rinsed, dried, powdered
and kissed the thin skin,
in air starched with the silence
of custom and love.
And whole years between packing lunches
into greaseproof, tinfoil or tupperware,
sorting washing for the mangle, the launderette,
the twintub, in air slippery with lies,
the lowering of eyes and slamming of doors.
Now there are these days
of stumbling upon yourself again
folded between sheets of airmail blue
or blurred amongst a group of girls,
Marcelle-waved, arms linked,
tucked in the linen drawer
in air stifled with lavender.
Page(s) 30
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