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the poet
Roy Marshall's publications are Gopagilla, The Sun Bathers (shortlisted for Michael Murphy Award), The Great Animator and After Montale – these most recent three all published by Shoestring Press. Roy is a former coronary care and research nurse now working in education.
the poems
The Weight
My friend, Christine
the beekeeper, tells me
that honey is heavy.
How heavy? I ask, and Chris says
arm-achingly so. Later,
I Google the heaviness of honey,
find that a gallon weighs
one and a half times as much
as the same volume of water.
And so, I think about
the curation of sweetness;
how it requires
so much more strength
than the nurture
of its opposite.
Trace
My fingers walked
to the fourth intercostal space.
This is where I placed
the first gel-backed tab.
The next went
opposite, across the sternum, on the nipple line.
Easy then to make
a descending arc, attach the leads
until a trace appeared;
the heart. Unlike in films
when it stopped for good
the line was never completely flat,
but wavering like the slap of water
against the dock
long after a boat has passed.
Relic
I’d rather take this road
to that chapel of larch on the hill
but my boy insists, so we step
into a nave of pines
screened by webs
where sound falls dead,
except for the rattle of cones.
Each breath is sealed with resin:
he finds a long bone,
lifts it from the needles:
fox or maybe badger, I tell him
taking his hand
suddenly aware
of our temporary skins.
Publishing credits
The Weight: Finished Creatures (Issue 3)
Trace: The Great Animator (Shoestring Press)
Relic: The Sun Bathers (Shoestring Press)