Most Read... Rebecca WattsThe Cult of the Noble Amateur
(PN Review 239)
John McAuliffeBill Manhire in Conversation with John McAuliffe
(PN Review 259)
Eavan BolandA Lyric Voice at Bay
(PN Review 121)
Patricia CraigVal Warner: A Reminiscence
(PN Review 259)
Vahni CapildeoOn Judging Prizes, & Reading More than Six Really Good Books
(PN Review 237)
Tim Parksin conversation with Natalia Ginzburg
(PN Review 49)
Next Issue Hal Coase 'Ochre Pitch' Gregory Woods 'On Queerness' Kirsty Gunn 'On Risk! Carl Phillips' Galina Rymbu 'What I Haven't Written' translated by Sasha Dugdale Gabriel Josipovici 'No More Stories' Valerie Duff-Strautmann 'Anne Carson's Wrong Norma'
Poems Articles Interviews Reports Reviews Contributors
PN Review 276
PN Review Substack

This poem is taken from PN Review 179, Volume 34 Number 3, January - February 2008.

Three Poems Tim Liardet

Goose Flesh

She climbed with the weeping boy
into the sleeves and legs of his clothes. He crouched

and acquiesced, and what he thought was his hand
reaching to pat the soft part of his abdomen

was in fact hers - her foot was in his shoe - so it was hard
to fathom if those scarlet toenails belonged to him

or her, and which body musk seeped out
from which armpit, which thought originated first

in his head or her encompassing head behind,
so little the lapse, the spaces, between them.

When he dressed himself, it was her hands that reached
around to each bone button, her fingers which clipped

the absurd butterfly to his collar. When she climbed out
and left a chilly shape where she had been

he felt his spine was corrugated and exposed,
every follicle of him, every single blond hair
...


Searching, please wait... animated waiting image