Daniel Trimmer
The Highest Lookout
patrolling birds
cut moon-sized slices out of sky
but nothing falls, since nothing much was raised;
sometimes the sky is dark, and clatters
of a far-off war like passing rain;
at night we figure it the most
as nothing understands the days
the arcs of war are spooned
into dessert-cups, served on trays
to girlish schoolboys writing conversation, acting plays;
sometimes the taste is planned, sometimes
of blood, for sometimes any war must pass us near
as brothers in a box, the riding faces grey,
the service standard, wooden, plain
corkscrewing birds
wheel inwards toward their prey, for death
is a dark-green bottle now, mouldy from the cellar's label
smeared by hand to read an alien name;
clay is the rub on which stubs toe-prone Caesar, the bird
(his crest) harpooned by lack of bubbles in the breath;
the dungeon shines like clawing, spraining sun
while talons tear black patches in the day.
Page(s) 263
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