Gaia Holmes
The work shop
He whistles a patchy duet
with the radio
as it slips from muffled Schubert
and scratches into static.
I'm six years old
making pies for the world,
numb fingered,
with clay cold as coins
laid on the eyes of the dead.
The workshop is my church,
my relics are:
tombstone slabs of earthenware,
powdered pigments of blood and stone
and the sink plugged up with porcelain rind,
a font of the holiest milk.
when they carry coffins past the window
streaks of funeral scent invade the air;
wood varnish, boot polish and arum lilies
mingle with the smell of baked earth
and the turnip stink
of our Calor gas stove.
He's sculpting life
from the dead flesh of river banks,
he's moulding leaf skeletons,
shrew's skulls and pre-historic mud.
He works with his back
to the black procession.
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