HCE received a lot of high-quality submissions for The Green Issue – sadly, too many to fit inside the magazine! So we offered some shortlisted writers and artists the chance to be published here on the website. Keep an eye on our social media for more great work like this, now that The Green Issue print magazine has been released! (For more information or to purchase your copy, visit our shop.)
Harry Gallagher
Spoil
Come to me, my sooted boys,
my burntblack cindered lovers.
A million misadventures spent,
I will recast you tender, soft.
Roll your roughest edges on me,
your tar-lung kisses skipping
upon my skin as it soothes
every sorry barroom bruise.
Remade, laid down, restyled,
picked clean by beaks and breeze
until flintless, you all recede
on the good earth’s easy chair.
For you belong to me, my lads,
my pneumoconiosis ghosts
dragged blinking to the grace
of an evergreening world.
Harry Gallagher has been published by Orbis, Prole, Iron Press, Interpreter’s House, Poets’ Republic and many others. He also has several pamphlets and collections to his name. His latest, English Jack has just been released by Black Light Engine Room Press. He runs the north east branch of the Poetry Society.