WOODLICE
are the dark made clumsy and curious.
They are what happens when cracks in walls
begin to speak. They know my kitchen bin
is brimming with gods; that angels hide
beneath yogurt pots; that every claggy mash
is layer on layer of fallen sunsets.
They are the dizzy priests of rot who sing
of ghost bluebells, wander in and out
of themselves, molting, as they nibble
the past, nudge through what they’ll become.
Watching them, my heart softens
like an old potato. Something crumples
the room’s emptiness and flings it away
to give it a chance to turn holy, grow roots.
JOHN MCCULLOUGH lives in Hove. His first collection, The Frost Fairs (Salt), won the Polari First Book Prize. His second collection, Spacecraft (Penned in the Margins), was shortlisted for the Ledbury Forte Prize. His third collection, Reckless Paper Birds (Penned in the Margins), won the 2020 Hawthornden Prize for Literature and was shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award. It was also named a Book of the Year by The Guardian, The Times, The Independent and The Telegraph. The poem “Flower of Sulphur”, from his fourth collection, Panic Response (Penned in the Margins), was shortlisted for the 2021 Forward Prizes for Poetry. His fifth collection, Crowd Voltage (Bloodaxe Books), was published in March 2026. He teaches creative writing at the University of Brighton.
Read more by John McCullough:
A poem in B O D Y
Another poem in B O D Y
Buy Crowd Voltage by John McCullough