Lance Lee
Thin...
Nothing is visible but
stars chiseled from ice
and the slow meteors of planes
above shadowed trees and homes
down my unlit street.
Here an owl calls more deeply
than any I’ve ever heard,
swallowing me whole so now
my eyes see the chisels
that shape the stars,
and beyond them
the first sky of fire
still embracing the night
that holds me in turn.
How eagerly I call
for blood like whiskey
in my maw, call
for the tickle of fur
in my gut, careless
of what life
I take for my own.
Shocked, I sink into myself
aware again of the civil hungers
in these near homes.
How easy
to shed the thin skin
of humanity, I think,
sleepless after I turn in,
hearing that low call
in my dark places
where even dreams fear to go.
Lance Lee’s poems appear widely in the UK and in the US: a new book of poetry, Becoming Human, is just out (see review page 71). A novel, Second Chances, and A Poetics for Screenwriters have also appeared recently. Apart from regularly appearing in the pages of Ambit, his poems have appeared recently or are forthcoming in Scintilla, Staple and Orbis.
Page(s) 15
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