Valerie Clarke
Ukraine 1941
Smoke from warehouse bonfires
our flat cold as outside.
Him in the bed – raincoat,
fur hat, trousers tucked into socks.
Nothing to eat.
At 5 a.m. I leave for the station,
take a train to the forest
my torch searching out paths.
If I had a gun I’d shoota
wild boar or rabbit, butcher it.
Bag what I might.
Dawn fires the birch trees.
Rooks rise like questioning eyebrows:
“Look out, look out”.
I scrape lichen, chew sharp berries,
remembering this spot,
a summer forcing house,
mushrooms on wormy stalks.
The track widens, I come to a clearing,
enclosures new to the forest.
A sudden surge. The man roars past,
boots tight to his calves. He wheels,
stops, stares at my pockets:
Fraulein, identity, yes?
Valerie Clarke has been published in magazines and anthologies, has won prizes in competitions and has had a poem ‘On the Buses’. A collection, Dance of Love and Death, was published by NPF in 2001.
Page(s) 32
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