Featured Poem

Midsummer dark-moon, black belly
of the Went. Clouds heavy with thunder,
a tremor of distant horses. Glyphosate
drifting down from the rape on a crisp bag.
Mackerel-baited eel trap, sunk under
the crampball ash; stake hammered
into the tangle-root, to hold against the flow.
Greasy, fish-stink fingers—Ulle’s pestilent bootlace,
knotting to foam in my Vaseline fumbling,
nailed to the tree, lank and bleeding.

Waterhens shrieking. Mink slinking
in the sedge. Ghost-voles scuffle and plop.
Eagles over the viaduct, the screech
of tearing metal—the spiked head of Penda,
riding the roil in its gorgon diadem,
sinks in the silts like Eohippus, butchered
girth deep in the quicksands of Tethys
by baying Haplorrhini, hairs tearing
from dock-flesh and writhing to darkness,
through turbine blades, nets of plastic Sargassum.