A bite
At the moment of expected pleasure –
the yank; a judder.
Thinking you're free –
next your face is coming off again.
Someone playing silly buggers.
Then I'm where it's too bright,
screaming “My eyes were not made for here."
Agape, pop-eyed, skin stripped-dry and shrinking -
I may look comically dumb to you.
To me I'm ending.
Yet with reason to hold on:
so far, I have always been somehow returned.
But you remember what occurred
and how again it's likely to strike.
You remember exactly. That's why
in the lure of pleasure, now there's pain.
However, just left here to my own devices
far worse things can happen in the river.
the yank; a judder.
Thinking you're free –
next your face is coming off again.
Someone playing silly buggers.
Then I'm where it's too bright,
screaming “My eyes were not made for here."
Agape, pop-eyed, skin stripped-dry and shrinking -
I may look comically dumb to you.
To me I'm ending.
Yet with reason to hold on:
so far, I have always been somehow returned.
But you remember what occurred
and how again it's likely to strike.
You remember exactly. That's why
in the lure of pleasure, now there's pain.
However, just left here to my own devices
far worse things can happen in the river.
Andrew Mayne lives in Stockport and teaches English at a secondary school in Manchester. Nearly 200 of his poems have appeared in a range of magazines.
Page(s) 74
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