Alyson Thomas
Liquid Cartography
Memory defines us as water etches a coastline
with great cliff faces where the sudden sea
has sheared away great tranches of time.
Smuggling coves where we rockpool our pasts,
shrimping for days we can never retrieve.
Pobbled bays, unpleasant to dally on
give way to endless flat sands, empty
and gilded with the glow of our summers
but there, lurk forgotten undertows.
Combing the sands, it junks the jetsam
behind hourglass dunes and sloshes cross currents
to swill brackish in the mouth of the estuary,
salt water or fresh, fresh water salt, salt fresh water?
River beds dry and sore, crack up to yield fossils
magnified by our aqueous humour.
Mind maps the ditches and streams and traces the river
back to its springing source while the heart builds dams
and culverts, champagne fountains and cesspits.
with great cliff faces where the sudden sea
has sheared away great tranches of time.
Smuggling coves where we rockpool our pasts,
shrimping for days we can never retrieve.
Pobbled bays, unpleasant to dally on
give way to endless flat sands, empty
and gilded with the glow of our summers
but there, lurk forgotten undertows.
Combing the sands, it junks the jetsam
behind hourglass dunes and sloshes cross currents
to swill brackish in the mouth of the estuary,
salt water or fresh, fresh water salt, salt fresh water?
River beds dry and sore, crack up to yield fossils
magnified by our aqueous humour.
Mind maps the ditches and streams and traces the river
back to its springing source while the heart builds dams
and culverts, champagne fountains and cesspits.
Page(s) 57
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