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

October 2013

Steam

Jon Stone

poetry

October 2013

Steam in the changing rooms, stripping off after the race, breathes like an engine. The air is filled up...

Art

March 2016

Seeing from behind: Park McArthur

Anna Gritz

Art

March 2016

In a public conversation between Park McArthur and Isla Leaver Yap that accompanied the former’s exhibition Poly at the...

poetry

November 2011

Lucifer at Camlann & Amen to Artillery: Two Poems

James Brookes

poetry

November 2011

LUCIFER AT CAMLANN In the drear fen of all scorn like a tooth unsheathed I shone for I too...

 

Get our newsletter

 

* indicates required