Julia Casterton
The Rejected Addresses
for Judy Gahagan
No one ever came to the house
and so it gradually perfected its emptiness -
invisible food nourishing the blood
of those who no longer needed to eat,
plants, their emerald chlorophyll so potent
they could realign a mind disastrously awry,
an air unbreathed except by plants,
pulsing, rich with all the requirements of human lungs.
Because the house was vacant it stood,
like all the rejected addresses, in back streets
with impossible rubbish bags
to offer its perfections.
The rejected addresses stand open, always, without expectations.
Everywhere they are offering themselves, gloriously empty
but furnished with everything, everything
I could ever set store by
as anywhere would that had been left to come to itself,
let be until it found out what it was and where.
Julia Casterton’s collections include Troublesome Cattle and Bottom’s Dream (Smith/Doorstop). She is a writing tutor and the author of Creative Writing, A Practical Guide (Macmillan).
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- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
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- Magma
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- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
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- North, The
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- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
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- Poetry Salzburg Review
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- Private Tutor
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- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
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- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
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- Yellow Crane, The