Issue 35: Elizabeth Robinson

Swimmer

One more time— I could do it— I could trail you out

That holiday home you made your home and

Home into the Indian Ocean. I was taught to cast a line

But not how to break it, not to dog-ear the page,

Shake the sand off the towel and get in the water

Like it’s nothing;— swimming down the Ganges

Came naturally to you, but not me;— the ash

Rehaemolyses and drowns offshore;— she wore the ring

Decades after you left England;— you would have stolen

Into the water and congealed if the wind wasn’t so strong

Or your daughters didn’t try so hard to shake you out

L’oeuf

I draped silk over you in the beginning

With large holes for eyes and the lace

Just shy of your lips so you could

Drink the water back from my mouth and

Say yes when I’d ask if you’d try it,

Then from behind I would fasten the back

And hold you up in the mirror

To say see, muscle is soft when you relax

And the dress stays on so beautifully

When you stand up straight, and I needle

You until you cup your own

Flesh, and tell me yes, that is soft,

And at last with the red nails over your face

I turn you into the pillow and you

Say the centre won’t hold much longer—

Much less the beard you are so used to having

Fenland Gothic

My husband brought home a hatchet

I’d buried, left his key in the letterbox

And had to knock when he forgot his watch-

Out and back in like heroin

Chic, like Mary Janes in red leather,

Making swords from ploughshares

That would soon come back again.

The farmers fought like black dogs and slew

Foully, I am still served up

Brown hairs in my bed every morning

But the farmers are finding their pitch

-forks, raising torches to turn you out.

The watches will turn you out.

The black dogs will turn you out.

Elizabeth Robinson lives in Cambridge, England. Her poetry has appeared in Sontag Magazine, Ink in Thirds, Midsummer, and more.

Copyright © 2026 by Elizabeth Robinson, all rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of Copyright law. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the notification of the journal and consent of the author.