Home Like a wary traveller suddenly at the door, she’d ask about the corncrake and if I ever heard its call. It was, I used to think, a simple question – nothing cosmic, deep or existential – she was, I just assumed, adjusting to the time to which she had returned. To tell the truth, […]
Issue 22: Part One
Three Poems
Rehearsal They look like they could be going somewhere. The bass player’s bringing everything he owns. The cellos and bass park closest to the door. There’s a list of their names, a place for coats. I can’t help thinking of toothbrushes, soap, honey wrapped for the journey in clothes, the instruments left at home […]
Two Poems
Louise Tonight you have set out all the keys on the oak table. They lie on the grained and pitted surface, each with its own design, finials of love-knots, triquetras, plain oval loops. You align them carefully, crosswise to the grain, you lay them out as you would lay out the cards for a reading, […]
Blue
Blue Months on it recurs in disparate forms, the famous blue of those ubiquitous chairs in orderly rows, sun loungers and parasols, striped blue on bone white sand, the graduated blue of the middle of August reflected in the tinted lenses of new sunglasses bought to replace a pair left at home. Certain tiles – […]
Three Poems by Xi Chuan, translated by Lucas Klein
Eight Fragments 1. Which Pornographic Peach Blossom Which pornographic peach blossom dreamt of me biting into this juicy peach and thought up this question in the orchard of the Queen of the West? I, the Monkey King, stole in here—and now I must steal out. 2. Facing the Sea Facing the sea, back toward […]