Be Nice
One hundred million times today already
I’ve said it to my daughter. Now she pulls
her hair across her eyes: goodbye for now.
I want to hit her. Instead I am slapping
peanutbutter on wheat bread with a stroke
so murderous that in the weedy hell
of the subconscious, all the mythic villainesses,
Medea and her friends, stand together
and applaud. Here it’s possible to hate
what you love. Here, in a circle of chairs,
women clap their rust-gloved hands
at each tearful confession. Last night I dreamed
I put the baby in the closet and forgot him.
Welcome to Desperation Anonymous.
Welcome to the disobedient world
where your own blood runs cold no matter what
tap you think you’re turning. Where at dinner,
when you talk about your mother, whom you’re becoming,
and your husband says calmly Well, that’s something
for you to work on, you fix your eyes on him –
stone-eyes, death-eyes, raptor-eyes
which lock in on a rabbit feeding quietly
in dewy grass a hundred feet below,
suspecting nothing, trusting the flat white sky.
Page(s) 38
magazine list
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- 14
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- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
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- Fabric
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- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
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- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
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- Lamport Court
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- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
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- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
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- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The