I’m an awkward X
On stormed sheets.

My Roman tie
Is trampled silk

Of Adriatic sunrise.
Its molten foil

Plunges in my chest.
I sit up in the dark.

I listen to Bach
And sulk.

I sink all night
Through the sun.

The hard sky
Is cold clear blue.

It holds a heavy glass glow.
I roll into black.

Cabs bank and coast
Through dazed straits below.

The floor slides
Like a raft in a tide.

The walls groan
And rock with whalesong.

We made love here,
Face down in a summer

River for hours,
Pulled toward

The softening surf
Of a warming ocean.

I digest
Whole forests and their deer.

I am a barbarian king brooding
In long captivity.

Snow-rigged warships
Of cloud bend apart

Far above this room.
They perish and astound.

The gaped ghost O
Of neon

Over the iron balustrade
Fills the room.

My heart is a meteorite.
I am its crater.

Edinburgh’s oldest literary journal and released three times a year, The Edinburgh Review has been transforming the critical landscape since 1802.

Buy individual copies or subscribe online.

New Issue, 133: Dark Things as Bright

In the current issue, Aaron Kelly questions what it means to be “Living in the Real World” in the eponymous article and our prose and poetry contributors offer the chance to sink into the unreality of imaginary realms. Issue 133 is full of fresh and feisty fiction from Ewan Morrison, Ruth Thomas, Glenn Patterson and Gwendoline Riley, poetry by Paul Muldoon, Ernest Hilbert, Jen Hadfield, David Wheatley and many more, articulate articles and shrewd reviews. Cover design by David Gilchrist and image from Finlay Cramb.