Gill Learner
Counted Out
Second Light Poetry Competition 2008 COMMENDED
In memory of Grandad Harold
It was quite a jump from Highbury to Amiens,
from hefting sides of pork to stacking the cart
with crates of bully beef, barbed wire,
steadying the nag when thunder
crumped too near, crooning what came easy
to an ostler’s son but couldn’t always
still the flinch of hide; and no good to grow
too fond of a handy screen.
It was a far cry
from feathers, Maud’s rump in his lap
and Little Connie’s dreams a reach away,
to a doss-down in a blackened barn,
the shift of hooves in the splintered night,
trying to block out yells by reliving bouts
at Clifton Star A.C., struggling to recall
the brine-smell as they trundled in the chara
to Southend.
It was a long, long way, chlorine
fizzing in his lungs – caught before he’d time
to tie a piss-soaked handkerchief over his face –
to the scurry of nurses, soothe of milk,
and the cough that never frightened off
the ten a day of Craven A until April 1972
when it all went quiet.
Page(s) 17
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