Leaden hearts
An exhibition of convict love tokens, the messages pricked onto penny coins
Today I fell for a Luddite’s chestnut eyes:
the idea, more striking than his tattoos
or foreign, sallow skin. His nineteen years
disappearing into an Outback where
heat shimmered like silk ribbons,
thin mockeries of why he was there.
Forget
Me
not.
She asked help from friends who couldn’t spell,
then couldn’t tell if the nail-stippled words
were what she needed to say
before the Eden sailed via the Cape
into Botany Bay. She used her initials,
drew her cottage, her dog and two trees.
This is
for my dear
farther from is
unfortalnate
datuer who
is Going out
of her cotage
for life
EA
Half-a-crown’s gone! The girl sleeping
rough in East Anglian barns - she had form;
brown ale made her bolder, less fearful,
less cold. Three months of farm labour
became fourteen years. And only
an aunt left to grieve.
Adieu
Dear Aunt
Adieu
There could be no flowers,
no grave, just this voice
left behind, barely heard.
Did he guess
family shame
would gouge out his name?
When
this you
see remember
me and bear me
in your mind Let
all the world say
what they whill
Dont prove To
me un kind
Geraldine Paine took an M Phil in Writing at the University of Glamorgan in 2002. She has had poems in The Rialto, The Interpreter’s House, Seam, Smiths Knoll, Connections and the
Kent & Sussex Competition Anthology 2000.
Page(s) 10
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