Hemsby 1966
The camera squanders a print
on a jumble of bodies and two cars,
black Beetle, grey Ford Anglia,
scuttled with suitcases
on this rocky outcrop of holiday homes.
My mother has the brittle smile
of someone who is staffing
to be rubbed out of the story;
my father looks misplaced in shirt and tie.
His sour mirror, my aunt, pouts
in bright red lipstick, my uncle
holds Toby Dog, who glares,
angry at the scent of lost rabbits.
In pink stripes and turquoise cardi
I am small and uncertain
in this last year of childhood,
while Gina, dependable ally
in blue print flowers,
clutches a copy of Fab 208
and squints into the sun.
Behind us the thin bungalow
squats on a dirt road
that threads east to the sea, west
to the sewage treatment works.
Its name, “Beach Holme”, swings
in peevish welcome on a board.
At night bats skittered
past the windows,
tiny ghosts beyond the glass.
My aunt’s flint voice
chipped crevices in thought.
The dunes trudged to the sea,
and we ran through them,
laughing and afraid,
to a beach of pebbles
and stillborn possibilities.
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- 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