Susan Wicks
Big pit
The mine finally opens.
No treachery of water
nudging the rocks apart,
no little birds
gassed in their cages. The quiet walls
ooze under our fingers,
leading us in. This buried place
holds only dust and damp,
the thin seam
almost exhausted. Now our miner-guide
turns off his lamp, shows us
what dark is
as he tells us the old stories:
a huddle of men’s bodies
in a purple scrawl of coal,
standing in their lost hundreds
blinking as they wait
for the cage, yawn-hungry,
stiff with sweat, aching
to be lifted,
and remember light.
Page(s) 10
magazine list
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- 10th Muse
- 14
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- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
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- 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
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- 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
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- 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