Small Places
On Noose Lane
with the wonky windows
where hawks hang like handsaws from dark chimneys
we small birds skitter and scurry
between wet bricks
You who brag up the button-eye beauty of the buzzard
look away now
and leave our little lives alone
Down squat Cato Street
where no plaque honours the conspirators
whose blood fades on floorboards
here always always the Jacobins fail
You who wear stoutly the waistcoat of the Crown
turn aside your brace of pistols
tread away now
and grant us the indulgence of our plotting
Along the scratched and scrubby shoreline
where brambles scramble on cracked tank traps
and black bugs burrow
in an indentation in the dunes
a plastic bag flaps for a flag from the scrap
You in your gorgets on gingerbread galleons
glide away now
and give us back our snowball’s chance of glory
At the sad slapped service station
beneath bunched bog brush branches
on a table by the toilet
his blood is smeared in ketchup
and his body spread in crumbs
You fat chefs, self-made, who point the greasy finger
piss off now
and allow me my melancholy eucharist
Page(s) 20
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