Spencer Wood
the slow burlesque
of a Hull coastal
summer all flat
and bright peeling
a silk layer only
to replace it with
fleece we walk
our desires along
the edge past
mosaic saltmarsh
a closed lighthouse
and deep gorse
strung with veils
until we reach
the point
where one of us
wants the sea
and the other stays
among the wrack
and does the shore
think it’s done
something wrong
when the tide
goes out and
how long
will it wait
for a lump
of sea-
glass fit
for a ring
Spencer Wood (he/him) is a queer writer and teacher living in Leeds. His poetry has been published in Fourteen Poems, Alchemy Spoon, Broken Sleep’s Masculinity: an anthology of modern voices, Strix and Modern Queer Poets amongst others. His poem ‘falling backwards holding glass’ was highly commended in the 2023 Verve Poetry Competition.
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