Nick Allen’s first collection the riding and his pamphlet the necessary line were both published by Half Moon Books. His recent collaboration with York based artist Myles Linley, between two rivers, was published by Maytree Press. His poetry has appeared in Stand, The Interpreter’s House, Poetry Salzburg Review and a variety of anthologies.
we fled the Rothko sunset
our vapour trail a knife slash
in canvas leaving our small
high window opened by a thin
chain in the bedroom above
a tight alley sharp with the hot
stink of the old Medina where
the muezzins call wanders
the early hours lost amidst
sleepless cries of children the
boisterous exhaust of the mosquito
moped armed with its fumes
the ricochet of the hawking man
as he spits his last the rendez-
vous of dark lashes and whispering
shadows sly in afternoon corners
a dogs skeletal yap the bakers
soft pat-pat as he works the round
breads in the dust of dawn smiths
glistening at forges deep in the
evermore insides of workshops
spitting sparks that skid across
the greased floor like galaxies
in the honest black of the minaret night
from the red red earth that
has captured terracotta sunsets
for restless millennia and is packed
to build fortresses and farmhouses
vein-thin canals and Kasbahs with
courtyards drowsy in the cold secret
of the tile under the blissful sprawl
of the fig and the Christmas-bauble
head-shrunk pomegranate soft
fountains with their rainbow veil
of spray and the warm sweetnesses
of sugar cube melting mint tea and
the endless endless endless heat
Poetry in this post: © Nick Allen
Published with the permission of Nick Allen