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
 

The key to all desire


The Jack-in-the-box has a smiling face
and ratchets its spring through the blackout.

Even in sleep, they await the jolt:
the horror and cramp of its presence.

What little they have brings them pleasure:
the ripe damask drapes, a fraying armchair

sheathed in voile, the fireplace roasting the tiles
as the coals glow and fall into white ash.

Everything in the room cushions their desire,
though her lips are always at the keyhole

as if speaking aloud could be an entrance
or muster the grace of a long-ago key.

He finds his way under the blank alley lamp,
as she watches the door from an old tin bath.

She turns all night on a gilded box,
and spins herself to paper, to fire, to clay.