Bristol-based confessional poet David Hanlon will be joining me on the podcast to discuss his debut chapbook Spectrum of Flight available from Animal Heart Press. Here’s a poem from the book:
Taking flight
Under night’s clawed grip
I still emerge
nestling into fledgling
into full grown
Small
bird into golden eagle
Overpowering size
I raptor-bully my way free
shimmer like a precious stone
broad wings extend into an equator
The warm-blooded
all of me
Each appendage a blade
a soldier on the front line
plumage-army
I embrace my feather-frilled distance
Feel my talons / scythes
cut
through earth / through stone
arrowhead beak / hooked
predator-sharp
Lion-boys stumble
at my earthquake-felt
beating
Whipping up sandstorms
choke-taste
metallic / smoke / dirt
Cyber yellow scale feet
unclench
hangings of fish hooks
thrown into the air
Tawny-coloured carnivores / nest-
twig-legged / look up
with dull
starved-sick eyes
See a small bird
glint-golden
in the mocking-blue sky
hear its nourishing barrage
David Hanlon
Poetry Non-Stop 