Learning to be dead in Cable Street
Morning: limbs working but still half asleep.
Mauve mist on the cobbles, blackbird quiet,
the work-drawn crowds in Cable Street muffled,
hushed in our soft somnambulance. We're all
on our way somewhere, somewhere automatic,
without thought or adrenaline. We move around
our bodies like birds, easly pneumatic,
observing boundaries, off the hook of the will,
walking around asleep, vaguely mindful.
Is this what it's like to be dead? Easy?
Wrapped in such a mist of haze and weather
that everything's clear? Could Alexander
leave Diogenes alone, here, now, when Cable
Street's become the fields of asphodel?
Mauve mist on the cobbles, blackbird quiet,
the work-drawn crowds in Cable Street muffled,
hushed in our soft somnambulance. We're all
on our way somewhere, somewhere automatic,
without thought or adrenaline. We move around
our bodies like birds, easly pneumatic,
observing boundaries, off the hook of the will,
walking around asleep, vaguely mindful.
Is this what it's like to be dead? Easy?
Wrapped in such a mist of haze and weather
that everything's clear? Could Alexander
leave Diogenes alone, here, now, when Cable
Street's become the fields of asphodel?
Julia Casterton teaches writing in London and is widely published in magazines, anthologies and collections.
Page(s) 30
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