Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- The Commute
- Warming
- Walking Home
- Cycling the Island
- The Garden
- Swallow Hole
- Sylvia Plath's House
- Sixteen Acres
- The Trap
- Praise Song
- View of a Badger on the Heights Road
- The Meaning of Birds
- The Ghost of a Flea
- Nest
- Twinned Sonnets
- Counting the Pennies
- Swan Upping
- The Frozen River
- Marsh Lily
- Praise Song
- To a Dandelion
- Moths
- Sestina for Rain
- A Perfect Mirror
- The Unicorn
- Praise Song
- Relics
- Getting Lost
- Woods in Snow
- Moon Walk
- Halfway Back
- New Moon
- Acknowledgments
- Notes
The Trap
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- The Commute
- Warming
- Walking Home
- Cycling the Island
- The Garden
- Swallow Hole
- Sylvia Plath's House
- Sixteen Acres
- The Trap
- Praise Song
- View of a Badger on the Heights Road
- The Meaning of Birds
- The Ghost of a Flea
- Nest
- Twinned Sonnets
- Counting the Pennies
- Swan Upping
- The Frozen River
- Marsh Lily
- Praise Song
- To a Dandelion
- Moths
- Sestina for Rain
- A Perfect Mirror
- The Unicorn
- Praise Song
- Relics
- Getting Lost
- Woods in Snow
- Moon Walk
- Halfway Back
- New Moon
- Acknowledgments
- Notes
Summary
Enough to snuff the quick/Of her small heat out
– SP ‘Hardcastle Crags’August, a woozy, pollinated afternoon,
heat on the hills like a shawl. Black
stones of the village pile up, black
on black, burnt in the air's oven.
Deep in the valley the wood hugs turns
of enfolded land, a seep of dark water
she pulls towards like a blind thing,
the air heavy as sleep where mill ruins
are a green temple. Lost now, the path
peters out to a rabbit-run and a shortcut
becomes a deadfall into a trill of menace,
the first sting, the next and then a host,
sting after sting in her hair, her mouth.
She can only crawl backwards uphill,
a headful of vibrating barrettes
tiny, spent jewels she shakes out,
hands beating the air like a claxon,
heart clapping to disperse the poison.
- Type
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- Information
- A Perfect Mirror , pp. 13Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2018