Punchbowl
I can see the four of them
watching over the punchbowl
as if it were a gene pool.
Things could have been so different.
My father and my friend’s mother
had met at medical school.
She used to embarrass him
with tales of his derring-do,
how he doctored the nurses’ punch with gin.
Then his was the restraining hand
that stopped her tipping another bottle in.
That braking on the brink of wild excess.
If I had drunk another millilitre
of the pubescent cocktail
I might have chewed qat leaves in a squat
or seduced one of those girls
that floated their first perfumes
here on this very dance-floor:
Eau de Cologne, Eau de Mayence
and other never-to-be-conceived-of O’s.
Page(s) 9
magazine list
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- Lamport Court
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- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
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- Poetry London (1951)
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- Poetry Salzburg Review
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- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
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- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The