share


Bacon’s Friends

Always got caught out by their shadows:

Stuck to their soles like monkeys on trapezes,

Cellophane fortune tellers curling on palms,

Squashed black jelly babies.  Naïve beside his

 

Cunning swirls: ugly blobs leaking like ink

Out of the cages that held their likenesses.

Glimpsed through cheeks or at the back

Of yawning, unravelled mouths.

 

Keep looking at the shadows, the shadows

That try to love their creator

While their doubles shave obscenely

Or choose stubbornly to read the newspapers.

 

 

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTOR

has published poetry, short stories, critical essays and travel writing in magazines in the UK and internationally.  He was runner-up in the Elmet Foundation Ted Hughes Poetry Prize. His work appears on the Poetry Library archive, for which he has made recordings.

READ NEXT

Interview

September 2015

Interview with Katrina Palmer

Jamie Sutcliffe

Interview

September 2015

G.W.F. Hegel isn’t looking too good. With an afternoon of student tutorials to attend at the School of Sculpture...

fiction

September 2015

The Afternoon

Wolfgang Hilbig

TR. Isabel Fargo Cole

fiction

September 2015

Nothing new on Bahnhofstrasse! — These are the first words to occur to me upon arrival. With the word...

Art

May 2015

(E-E) Evgenij Kozlov

E-E

Art

May 2015

Madder than the World is a series by Russian artist (E-E) Evgenij Kozlov, who came to prominence as a founding member of the...

 

Get our newsletter

 

* indicates required