Peter Roberts
The Spider
Spiders die decorously
Folding their legs beneath them
In the spasm of extinction.
They do not stop struggling for life
To lie exhausted and dead in a heap;
Rather they arrange themselves
Suddenly, perfectly, as if rehearsed,
Like a knife and fork, laid
Correctly on an empty plate.
In life, they weave for themselves
A living subtle maze of concealment;
So, no wonder then that at their end
There should come this last conceit,
This last unravelling of chaos,
Out of the shambles of death.
Winning entry of the Kirklees Poetry Competition 1990
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
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- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
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- Fabric
- Fire
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- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
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- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
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- 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
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- 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