Frank Dullaghan
Stones
Stones have to be picked up
and checked for voice.
It's not a voice that you hear
but one that calls
through your fingertips,
that vibrates just slightly out of tune
so that a conversation happens
and you hold the stone
that little bit longer, warming to it,
place it in your pocket.
Others get picked up and dropped,
picked up and dropped.
Now your window-sills sing,
you sleep to a whispered word
from under your pillow.
When you put on your coat
you are weighed down with words
all trying to finish their sentence.
and checked for voice.
It's not a voice that you hear
but one that calls
through your fingertips,
that vibrates just slightly out of tune
so that a conversation happens
and you hold the stone
that little bit longer, warming to it,
place it in your pocket.
Others get picked up and dropped,
picked up and dropped.
Now your window-sills sing,
you sleep to a whispered word
from under your pillow.
When you put on your coat
you are weighed down with words
all trying to finish their sentence.
Frank Dullaghan is editor of Seam poetry magazine. He is also one of the organisers of the Essex Poetry Festival and is widely published in magazines including Dark Horse, HU, London Magazine,
Magma, Poetry Ireland and Rialto.
Magma, Poetry Ireland and Rialto.
Page(s) 87
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