June English
Antique Lace
Settee, armchairs, antimacassars,
silk flowers in vases standing tall, casting
strange shadows on high-ceilinged walls.
See how slowly stiffened fingers crawl
across the broad expanse of crochet shawl,
counting double-trebles, teasing out the fringe.Blind-eyed she sights herself:
barefoot on wet sands, scaling loose slack
to the tumbledown shack, where they lay
in love long gone...
See how she wrestles, pulls it sideways,
finds remembered corals, carmine red that streaks
the blue, as when the sun shuts down the day.
Blind-eyed she finds and feels its edges –
digs her bony fingers through the damaged lace,
as if to catch and tie each broken thread:
scratch of sea-birds’ claws
on the corrugated roof augurs
ebb tide, fields choreographed in green
give way to misty, somnolent grey,
soft-focused now as evensong ...
Settee, armchairs, antimacassars,
silk flowers in vases standing tall, casting
strange shadows on high-ceilinged walls.
Page(s) 180
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