Matthew Caley
The Sleet Archangels
Will soar on Araldite wings,
one’s hooks in your shoulder,
the others’ rendition of
the last page from The Gormenghast Trilogy.
We will sit
and watch their freckles multiply.
They cannot pay the rates
so they flutter at the light-bulb
on gold-gossamer,
Elizabethan wings
like levitating, over-sized moths.
Then flap down to claim squatter’s rights.
How many of them
could you fit on the end of a pin?
Chairs will become obsolete
and yes, oh yes,
the tuned-in, turned-on weather forecast
will be sleet, and then, more sleet.
We should peep through their letterbox
to see the glacial flow
of circulars
up the Wilton-carpeted stairway.
It will thaw out eventually
into a river that will sashay out the doorway
only to end up in Sing-Sing or Attica,
chalking off the numbers-
or, loop upon loop
with a wing and a prayer,
their souls will up and disappear
through a tiny gap in the Ozone-layer
somewhere far out, somewhere over Antarctica.
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