Crowstep
poetry journal
A Well
We wished as children to throw
our parents’ money down. Wait
for the plink, the drip-rung chime
hoping it would earn flowers
for what liver-wort fringed returns, nothing
but the monster clinging
itself back to light on spindling
arms and a moon curving to
our purpose, as sand rained down upon
the leant body, railing us.
The well-tended grounds speak of something
perhaps wrong, of the money at bottom,
the drained parents, a ring of light—place
where rain goes to die.
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Giles Goodland's books include: A Spy in the House of Years (Leviathan, 2001), Capital (Salt, 2006), Dumb Messengers (Salt, 2012) and The Masses (Shearsman, 2018). Civil Twilight was published by Parlor Press in 2022. He has worked as a lexicographer, editor, and bookseller, and teaches evening classes on poetry for Oxford University's department of continuing education. He lives in West London.
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