Mailing List


Rosanna Mclaughlin
Rosanna Mclaughlin is an editor at The White Review.

Articles Available Online


The Pious and the Pommery

Essay

Issue No. 18

Rosanna Mclaughlin

Essay

Issue No. 18

I.   Where is the champagne? On second thoughts this is not entirely the right question. The champagne is in the ice trough, on...

Essay

April 2019

Ariana and the Lesbian Narcissus

Rosanna Mclaughlin

Essay

April 2019

‘Avoid me not!’ ‘Avoid me not!’                                   Narcissus   Let me describe a GIF I’ve been watching. A lot....

Two years ago I was walking up a mountain path having been told of excellent views from the summit The day was clear and hot, the sky wide and cloudless There was only the sound of my breath, my boots treading, and the faint clonking of cowbells back down the track What little wind there was on the climb soon dropped as I reached the summit, as if it had been distracted or called upon to cover events elsewhere I drank eagerly, catching my breath, and then took in the view, which was as spectacular as I had been told I could make out a tree, a shrub, really  (it being so distant in the valley below I couldn’t say how high), silently on fire, the smoke trailing a vertical black line before dissipating I watched the flames consume the whole shrub No one came to stop it No one seemed to be around to see it, and I felt very alone From nowhere a great tearing came: a fighter-jet, low and aggressive, ripped above me and, surprised, I dropped on one knee and watched it zoom, bellowing overhead As it passed I saw a shred of something fall, a rag, spinning I shielded my eyes to see, bewildered and pinned watching the object, the rag, gather its falling weight, its speed, until it flumped down without a bounce, only ten footsteps to my right It was part of a white bird, a gull No head, just a wing and a hunk of body No leg, or tail, just the wing and the torso: purple and bloodied A violent puddle surrounded it, already mixing with the grit Ferrous blood wafted and I recoiled feeling suddenly cold and very high up and the view swam madly: I saw for a second the flaming tree as I staggered backwards and became aware that I was sitting, I had fallen, but I felt as if I was falling and falling still, my mind unable to connect the events which were real and terrifying because they were real, only now I think it was not, perhaps, a mountain, it was not, perhaps, a shrub on fire, and not a fighter-jet boring its noise through the sky, and I am certain now, it was not me, or a wing

Contributor

July 2016

Rosanna Mclaughlin

Contributor

July 2016

Rosanna Mclaughlin is an editor at The White Review.

Ten Years at Garage Moscow

Art Review

November 2018

Rosanna Mclaughlin

Art Review

November 2018

When I arrive in Moscow, I am picked up from the airport by Roman, a patriotic taxi driver sent to collect me courtesy of...
Becoming Alice Neel

Art

August 2017

Rosanna Mclaughlin

Art

August 2017

From the first time I saw Alice Neel’s portraits, I wanted to see the world as she did. Neel was the Matisse of the...

READ NEXT

poetry

April 2014

MUEUM

SJ Fowler

poetry

April 2014

Since I have worked at the mueum I have published, and I have written 486 pems. I have seen...

poetry

October 2012

Bacon’s Friends

Stephen Devereux

poetry

October 2012

Always got caught out by their shadows: Stuck to their soles like monkeys on trapezes, Cellophane fortune tellers curling...

feature

March 2016

Behind the Yellow Curtain

Annina Lehmann

feature

March 2016

Notes from a workshop   At first, there is nothing but a yellow curtain at the back of the...

 

Get our newsletter

 

* indicates required