Michael Curtis
Butterfly Box
This pungent musk
of a thousand decompositions
arrested in glue
lugs me back
to your hinged butterfly box
that accidental reliquary
that waited for me
on top of the hall wardrobe
immune to polish or dust
which, opened flat,
unfolded two glass displays
of unnamed Lepidoptera
laid out in state
pinned in stiff iridescent rigor
by an unknown collector
brought home from a hill station
a bazaar in Africa or India or Burma
a voyage of Brag or Poker
packed air-tight immaculate
as you posted round the pre-war globe
till time cracked the seal
and they brittled to exhalation
as these brilliant carapaces one day must
perfume oblivion like you.
of a thousand decompositions
arrested in glue
lugs me back
to your hinged butterfly box
that accidental reliquary
that waited for me
on top of the hall wardrobe
immune to polish or dust
which, opened flat,
unfolded two glass displays
of unnamed Lepidoptera
laid out in state
pinned in stiff iridescent rigor
by an unknown collector
brought home from a hill station
a bazaar in Africa or India or Burma
a voyage of Brag or Poker
packed air-tight immaculate
as you posted round the pre-war globe
till time cracked the seal
and they brittled to exhalation
as these brilliant carapaces one day must
perfume oblivion like you.
Page(s) 20
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