C. G. Vowles

Tunnel Visionary

After three straight years
of reading surrealist poetry
on the tiled platforms
of the London underground,

the mind can shrink from you,
squidquick, into the dark
(in the lilac time
between streetlamps and their dimming)

until its wet blink
beholds petals
upon the spines
of fiery starfish.

C. G. Vowles teaches English in a boarding school in North Yorkshire, dividing his free time between writing poetry and writing essays on obscure pop-cultural phenomena.