Ian Brook
Missive
She wasn't found immediately and for a long time
We thought something else was happening, something
Not worse but different; an event that might attract
Reasons and explanations backwards, like a suicide,
Like every inconceivable thing
Only possible to conceive in its own aftermath
And then wrongly. You sang to yourself
And dusted the change, the letter left half written
I brought myself to read that winter evening,
Lingering on the contours of each word
Until I came abruptly
To the last word, paralysed at its middle;
A sentence commuted, a stream of thought
Disturbed by the innocuous clatter of living.
And then it came.
And then we began to wonder
What these murderous songs could have meant
To you or anyone. We follow their narratives
As mourners follow a corpse, each sense
Arrested and each tongue dumb. For months
We refused to credit the idea of it, but now
With our best years ripped from us
Like so many children, like children
Find ourselves embracing each discarded alternative.
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