Sally Read
Ephemeroptera
for Amy Miner
It will have no stomach,
no mouth
and live for one day.
Baby mayfly
I almost pinched
in hot fingers
like a gnat, a midge,
though yellow as butter,
and new-hatched legs
wobbly as a calf ’s.
But a mouth that can’t
suckle,
or mold flapping
questions
round a tongue.
And a body with no stomach
can’t sense hunger
streaming up;
can’t fester on masses
of luminous thoughts
that would nest there
like cod’s roe.
No, these confettis are sealed
in their destinies,
blindfolded,
tongueless geisha
in their yellow kimonos,
sliding
over non-existent
ripples of air,
before shedding wings,
spraying eggs
in a wedding dance.
The coup de grace:
submitting
in one black skin
on the belly
of the bronze
late-summer lake
to a glut of trout.
And gifted
in this vanishing
as though lost
between loud heads
in a crowd; absorbed
painlessly
into a snow-fall
of light;
imperceptible
as cobwebs strung
over trees, sticky
and strong.
Page(s) 54-55
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