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

feature

February 2014

Another Way of Thinking

Scott Esposito

feature

February 2014

I. There is no substitute for that moment when a book places into our mind thoughts we recognise as our...

feature

May 2013

Haneke's Lessons

Ricky D'Ambrose

feature

May 2013

‘Art is there to have a stimulating effect, if it earns its name. You have to be honest, that’s...

fiction

December 2011

Travel

Paul Kavanagh

fiction

December 2011

Taxi The taxi stopped and Henry climbed into the taxi. The taxi driver went around the block three times...

 

Get our newsletter

 

* indicates required