John Lindley
Touchdown
Abandoned village - Tsougria, Greece
Here is where the birds come down.
They belly up in tin baths, slick as seals,
hang their talisman claws from ceiling hooks,
doze relentlessly dead in the undergrowth
to a future of feather and bone.
They hood down wet between walls
and are brick dusted and blown bone dry
amongst the remnants of picnics:
a bottle of sugar and wasps,
a pizza, 40 minutes eaten, with
a second hand shadow ticking over what’s left.
In here, the bone white x-ray of moonlight
through shutters is on the shredded curtain.
Out there, the tiny bows of swallows
above the fetid lake; the feathers of the dead
quivering with black fly on the marshes;
the sea’s heavy undertow in the still blue day.
Page(s) 23
magazine list
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- 10th Muse
- 14
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- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
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- French Literary Review, The
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- Global Tapestry
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- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
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- Magma
- Matchbox
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- Modern Poetry in Translation
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- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
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- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
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- Poetry Salzburg Review
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- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
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- 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