Judy Gahagan
For Other Places, Other Times
The Day of the Dead
the one big bell is tolling, deep-mouthed,
to drown out small-town
chit-chat with its one tone,
its loud opinion -
while a throng
of after-tones is spilling
from its iron prison,
filling the streets with coppery dreams
and sending birds rising high
on repercussions of shining air
over the unmoved hills
but intoxicating me.
I long for words to break free
from this stale prison,
the patrol of its opinions,
long to let loose
such enharmonic sound effects
as these.
On the Day of the Dead,
in a high town which roots down
into the depths of the hill,
the bell tolls on,
and I clobber
an earnest leaden tongue
for words, and long
to make them ricochet
through other worlds,
to wake up strangers,
to widen ripples to the shore
I never reach.
I long for words
to resolve the cadences
of a luminous order,
sound out the listeners
on The Day of The Dead.
Page(s) 60-61
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