Reworking it
'76: the hot summer everyone
still talks about, the summer
I haven't quite left home. Somehow,
I'm weeding an onion field
by hand, alone.
Quite biblical, you observe; wheat, tares,
and stuff. I bet you left the roots behind,
just made it look okay. Like life, you say.
I'm eighteen, gawky, string and bone. The boys
are fields away, cutting turnips, slicing thumbs,
shirtless, shouting, shirking.
I crouch, uprooting. The church clock
precisely quarters every hour.
A parable, you yawn, all weeds and work,
unbearable slow time etc. These onion tears:
they've all been cried before.
My spine rages, throat congeals: there's tilth
blearing each eyeball, grit between my teeth.
There must be other ways to tighter jeans,
the latest Wings LP.
Just tell it how it was, you say; cut metaphor,
cut psycho-whatsisname. Just fact.
And anyway, it's years ago.
There was a drought, crops failed,
I weeded an onion field, left home,
met you, it rained, the weeds
grew back, that's all.
Page(s) 35
magazine list
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- North, The
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- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
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- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
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- Poetry Salzburg Review
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- Private Tutor
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- Quarto
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- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
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- Shearsman
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- South
- Staple
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- Thumbscrew
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