share


Littoral

We did not know
it would leave us
here. Our sun sits
bored as a dog
at noon, gnawing
the rocks.

 

No stir, no. From
here, the earth might
as well be flat –
this eye its centre,
this stone heart its
own, all

 

horizons one drop
down and off. I
am not yet a
parvenu; ideas,
like books,
cannot

 

content me. There
is no fact much
further than the
reach of an arm –
desperate,
dislocated.

 

This old tongue is
dried to the bone.
I hate the sun,
that attrition of seen
things, which comes home
safe and sound.

 


ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTOR

works in Manchester. His plays have been performed at Pleasance Theatre, Camden People's Theatre and the Arcola Theatre. He reviews for PN Review and has studied Creative Writing at the University of Manchester.

READ NEXT

poetry

February 2015

In bed with the radio

Péter Závada

TR. Mark Baczoni

poetry

February 2015

IN BED WITH THE RADIO   You’d turned against me. There’s safety in knowing, I thought. Like lying in...

Art

February 2013

Haitian Art and National Tragedy

Rob Sharp

Art

February 2013

Thousands of Haiti’s poorest call it home: Grand Rue, a district of Port-au-Prince once run by merchants and bankers,...

feature

February 2015

Greece and the Poetics of Crisis

Joshua Barley

feature

February 2015

On the Aegean island of Skyros, in the Carnival period immediately preceding Lent, a more ancient ritual takes place....

 

Get our newsletter

 

* indicates required