Jane Holland
The daughter kneels
by the keyhole,
puts her ear to its slim black egg.
She hears how it beats
against her, wave upon wave,
advancing, receding.
The house coils its plump new skin
into her consciousness, foetus-shaped,
drawing each dark room into its mouth like a thumb.
Umbra will have to go.
A bluebottle is crashing against glass somewhere,
an interminable blue-black panic.
There is no room. No room.
Stella cannot breathe.
The shadow of the banisters is threatening.
The stairs creak, silently, as if someone
were standing there, waiting.
The passageway will swallow her.
She expels herself violently, slithering
dark red tiles to the kitchen, bursting swing doors
to the scent and flicker of the herb garden.
Stella lurches from the sprawling mint
to the crazy blue stars of borage,
clawing herself. Scratching. Retching.
Light spills down on her upturned face
like an axe, splitting her skull, the invisible crack.
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