This poem is taken from PN Review 262, Volume 48 Number 2, November - December 2021.
‘Love letters of the Hampstead Modernists’
and other poems
Love letters of the Hampstead Modernists1
Love,
you are pebble-headed
and starfish-mouthed,
dark as a lick of brine
and pocket-smoothed.
That summer
I carried you
all up the beach,
beloved as an Octopus Rock –
as if I might taste you
with these fine nerves tentacular
or come to know you
as I warmed you in my palm.
Later I prepared a box:
sea urchin spines, crab
backs and limp claws,
porcelain-white barnacles
...
Love,
you are pebble-headed
and starfish-mouthed,
dark as a lick of brine
and pocket-smoothed.
That summer
I carried you
all up the beach,
beloved as an Octopus Rock –
as if I might taste you
with these fine nerves tentacular
or come to know you
as I warmed you in my palm.
Later I prepared a box:
sea urchin spines, crab
backs and limp claws,
porcelain-white barnacles
...
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