Anna Crowe
The French for 'bonfire'
When I asked you to help with weeding,
you dug my cowslips up.
So flower-beds are now off-limits
and you’re confined to pruning and burning.
But I can see how much you enjoy
laying about you with that Gurkha knife
our youngest smuggled in from India.
I love to watch you – gentle, cautious
man that you are – hacking at holly
and slashing at rampant beech-hedge
with wild, extravagant gestures;
casting your clothes to the four winds.
Later, the fire absorbs us.
I haul out branches which you feed
into the flames, recoiling
as holly’s oils flare, burn green
with little roars of sound that die
in whitish, choking smoke.
We never get through it all.
When it gets dark we call it a day,
gazing, as the fire goes quiet, at depths
of whispering incandescence; molten places;
pulsing, soft-bodied grubs of light
hardening under a feathery crown of ash.
We’re hungry. Then it’s time for bed.
But even here you’re not allowed to rest –
not yet. Your hair still smells of smoke,
and I want your hands to whisper
a tale of blistering encounters,
to tell their hurts and hot abrasions.
My skin is listening.
Page(s) 12
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