Food chain of one
Bright in the rain-washed foliage hid
beyond the culvert in a little dip
home to lost balls and grass clippings, the roofs
peripheral to this lush focus, you can
grab a fistful of honeysuckle crushed
in the storm and taste the reality
that potpourri intends to evoke, just
as the sodden ground gives its own contours
to your feet, and a mockingbird flits from
the tree line screening the road, no longer
a landscape architect’s afterthought but
ready to drive you from its nest. There is
no entitlement to happiness – that
serves only to sell you more of what
you attempt to escape whenever
you find a moment or a place like this:
the unmediated scent of spring and a kiss
laid like a blossom on your inner thigh,
origin unknown, destination dust, yet
transcending appraisal, a beetle’s eye.
beyond the culvert in a little dip
home to lost balls and grass clippings, the roofs
peripheral to this lush focus, you can
grab a fistful of honeysuckle crushed
in the storm and taste the reality
that potpourri intends to evoke, just
as the sodden ground gives its own contours
to your feet, and a mockingbird flits from
the tree line screening the road, no longer
a landscape architect’s afterthought but
ready to drive you from its nest. There is
no entitlement to happiness – that
serves only to sell you more of what
you attempt to escape whenever
you find a moment or a place like this:
the unmediated scent of spring and a kiss
laid like a blossom on your inner thigh,
origin unknown, destination dust, yet
transcending appraisal, a beetle’s eye.
Bruno Anthony lives in Arlington, Virginia, and has had poems in magazines in the USA, Ireland, Japan and Britain.
Page(s) 25
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The