Magma Showcase: Jane Routh
Transit of Venus
Somewhere above the heavy haze, Venus
is transiting the sun. The other side of the world
a man casts off his moorings, searching for warmth.
Here, small birds fall from secret places:
lucky ones find a twig to cling to, forsythia
or rose; fasten on like mutant blooms.
Those that land on the grass whirr
like cockchafers at a light. Little Lucifers,
they can only descend, not rise up:
they have not yet learned fear,
they open their wide mouths, O yes
they’d believe anything I dropped in there.
They have not yet learned the sun can blind,
that to leave the nest is to cross a pale,
that when you ask, it will no longer be given.
Page(s) 38
magazine list
- Features
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- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
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- ARTEMISpoetry
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- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
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- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
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- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
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- Magma
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- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
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- North, The
- Oasis
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- Orbis
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- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
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- Poetry Salzburg Review
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- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
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- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
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- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The