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

Interview

Issue No. 11

Interview with Alice Oswald

Max Porter

Interview

Issue No. 11

Alice Oswald is a British poet who lives in Devon with her family. Newspaper profiles will inevitably mention the...

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;...

fiction

January 2014

To Kill a Dog

Samanta Schweblin

TR. Brendan Lanctot

fiction

January 2014

The Mole says: name, and I answer. I waited for him at the indicated location and he picked me...

 

Get our newsletter

 

* indicates required