Philip Gross
Tale from a Crypt
Smiles not to be argued with,
queasing me forward .... ‘Go on,
he won’t bite’. Each tour on the hour
had to proffer a child
to the side of his thin box bed.
The grown-ups rippled, clockwork
gathering to strike.
I stood; he lay
as befitted our stations, him
six hundred years my senior,
maybe a knight. The hand
he granted to me like a favour
(glossed with other people’s sweat)
felt like a Guy’s twig glove.
I’d glued Airfix models
with more life to them than this;
canvas skin, bone struts,
just a stiff-necked refusal quite
to be a skeleton.
The flashbulbs tweaked.
The guide held out her palm
for tips. So that was death.
No mystery. I remembered the day
I’d happened on a clearing after rain
bright with sawdust and sunlight,
steam mingling up
into no shape from the cut stump,
a pan boiling dry.
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