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

Art

September 2011

Interview with Marnie Weber

Timothée Chaillou

Art

September 2011

Los Angeles-based artist Marnie Weber has spent her career weaving music, performance, collage, photography and performance together into her...

fiction

April 2013

Fairy Tale Ending

Stacy Patton

fiction

April 2013

Rodeo Cowboy You meet him at a rodeo dance on the Fourth of July. You are 17. He is 20;...

poetry

May 2013

Flatlands

Saskia Hamilton

poetry

May 2013

Horses and geese in a sodden field. Solitaries with luggage on a wet platform. Postage-stamp house on a bit...

 

Get our newsletter

 

* indicates required