Bio
Joseph Bullock is a writer, film critic, and photographer from Suffolk, UK. He has had essays published in 3:AM Magazine, PN Review, Film Daze, and One Room With A View. He graduated from Lancaster University in 2022 with an MA in literature and creative writing.
Joseph Bullock
Snails
I took care not to step on them, but the wind
was careless and we had to get home.
Wading through reeds like sickly pearls,
each sheltered coyly from an ocean of sky.
They looked like their own fossils, the brassy
Werther's swirls grimacing, a flurry of coins.
Reaching your old, rotten porch, boots
half-fed to the lopsided fields, we embraced,
shrapnel of snail soldiers clinging like magnets,
dripping greasy remains onto tarnished earth.
The elements are against us, I kept saying,
splitting open the threshold of a new, dryer world.