About Text Size: larger | normal | smaller
Likestarlings is a place for talking in poems. We pair poets with poets and they write a sequence of six new works by responding in turn to one another. Our palaver blog goes beyond poetry to discuss collaboration in theory and in practice. Please take a look, and feel free to add comments, opinions and suggestions here. Read poems here
 

Copeland


Suddenly I’m cantering towards you,
fey, undiscovered, Copeland ‘87.
Revelling in fleet unravelling heat,
tangible speed, we span through the water,
my face reeling, upright in tight shook air,
while you held your breath, pushed darkness aside,
till the salt became ice, weeding and rolled.
Loaded, you dived and dived, inhaled by hush,
until I thought my stopped eyeballs would split.
Then up! your tongue slim and stripped,
no barrier at the tomb of your throat,
you erupted into drought, triumphant,
sucking back the glittering dusk,
slurping bawdily at the day’s cusp.


And I can’t believe I gently left you in the earth’s hot pool
to stare at the side of a cave like it was an icon hammered by mystic tool.
Covered in green mud, you toasted steam to the avalanche with a bottle of too-strong home brew,
while I stood in the dark, looking at stone:

Ah!, was all I could say. Ah! the fireflies of Flat Rock.
No wholeness, just a shallow perplexity and a feeling of loss.