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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
 

Morning after

 

Red-letter days, we look for omens.
Here at the sink with a view
of the coast road, laundry turning

itself over on the line and a magpie
cross-grained as the number thirteen
startling across.

Or here, where the scribe turns over
a new leaf of fly-blown vellum,
checks the initial, selects crimson

and lapis for the fairytale ending for
the goose that swallowed its carbuncle
and lived happily ever after somewhere

out along the coast road which leads
to nothing in particular but the sky
blue as it was in the beginning.

The new year slips into old habits.

In the foreground, hands turning over
and over in the sunlit, soapy water.
In a dish, the plain gold ring.