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 Ghost of a Flea
- 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
What is this that comes, tongue out,
bug-eyed, gripping daintily behind
what could be a tail but is a knife,
come with a bleeding bowl, fingers
curved like long-dead nails? What is this
apparition, stars in the wake of his comet?
The corner of the bedroom housed him,
gigantic in a speck of dust, eyes
soft white pods of spider nests
where the million bodies might
any minute come rushing. These days
I name the horror, frame by frame,
but then there was a pit, me clinging
to it, pushing back at what I could
not see. What is it the poet sees,
now speaking silently, now creeping
from gold curtains, tongue moving
between its teeth, stilled but approaching,
coming, coming; at once huge
and far away, immensely tiny and close?
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- A Perfect Mirror , pp. 18Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2018