Invocation To Siva
from Mata Hari And The Music Box
Like a rabbit in gunsights
I sat transfixed as she
winked at someone behind me:the spotlit watchspring of my love.
I was falling backwards into her,
I was losing my skin, if I wrote
like she movedwhat words could I use?
An audience of unwieldy bodies,
artists, poets, English officers,
consuming her politely,using a fork to eat a peach.
Swedenborg himself
would have called her divine
but she still prickledlike a Colette novella.
I only have words to offer, just paper flowers,
picked scabs of self-expression,
and Symbolist bonemeal, connotative properties:
the poetry of double entendre.
The end. Curtain.
I place my stupid hat on my stupid head,
left in love
in Paris fog
to weather the spiel
of the gaudy streets.
Page(s) 36-37
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