Most Read... Rebecca WattsThe Cult of the Noble Amateur
(PN Review 239)
John McAuliffeBill Manhire in Conversation with John McAuliffe
(PN Review 259)
Patricia CraigVal Warner: A Reminiscence
(PN Review 259)
Eavan BolandA Lyric Voice at Bay
(PN Review 121)
Vahni CapildeoOn Judging Prizes, & Reading More than Six Really Good Books
(PN Review 237)
Christopher MiddletonNotes on a Viking Prow
(PN Review 10)
Next Issue Stav Poleg's Banquet Stanley Moss In a concluding conversation, with Neilson MacKay John Koethe Poems Gwyneth Lewis shares excerpts from 'Nightshade Mother: a disentangling' John Redmond revisits 'Henneker's Ditch'
Poems Articles Interviews Reports Reviews Contributors
Reader Survey
PN Review Substack

This poem is taken from PN Review 256, Volume 47 Number 2, November - December 2020.

The Fools and other poems Lucy Tunstall
The Fools

The way they walked to church over the fields and made everything milk white.
The way the heat-haze took them out by the ankles and that cloud of white
hair that could actually have been cloud. The way they swam in and out
of sight like a pair of stupid moons behind clouds, a kind of cut-out
flatness that made you want to push them all the way over
and drive a steamroller over them real slow.



Machine

I married a machine that could reconfigure itself. The machine
survived everything. The function of the machine was to burn fuel.

The machine made everything machine-brand – machine-brand
coffee, machine-brand daisies, machine-brand duvet-cover.

My eyes were very heavy when I looked at the machine. To me
the machine looked like a machine, but to other people it looked
like other things.

Parts of the machine were vintage to show originality. The vintage
...


Searching, please wait... animated waiting image