Valerie Clarke
Taking theatre to the people
So Jack the Ripper did and likewise I
range celluloid street, cinéma vérité
of whore, pimp and plump au pair, crucify
the inexpensive ladies who merit a
butchers knife, the indifferent kiss
of steel at the groin. My soft lips lap
those vacancies of thighs, small promontories
of breasts. I straddle the fragile gap
of bone and bone. A spent and sallow moon
hangs like a uterus above the square.
A discotheque spurts music from a room
three storeys down. I wash and comb my hair,
sponge blood. The skewered lady on the bed,
scratches her armpits, rises from the dead.
Valerie Clarke lives in London. She has been published in magazines, competition anthologies and, shortly, ‘On the Buses’.
Page(s) 33
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