Homes
‘Make yourself at home’, they always said,
‘Give it two flushes’. ‘Call us Uncle, Aunt’
(I knew it wasn’t like I knew they weren’t)
‘This is your room’. Hospital-cornered bed:
afraid to dent its lines of candlewick ....
Should I wait? Or go downstairs? Bowl of fruit
flawless as cellophane - was it to eat
or, like the loaded bushes, ‘just to look’?
Embroidered cottage text - ‘HE CARES’; jug
of Honesty lorgnettes; thoughtfully
provided toys almost as good as new;
drawer that opened boy-sized like a morgue ....
And when their cheerfulness had run away
(Was it the discovery of a week-old crop
of pee stains dried out like a contour map
under the bed clothes? Or was it how
I ‘touched’ things - that china dog they said
was ‘irreplaceable’? Or failed to be
their long-lost son, a furry-necked B.A.
perched like a vulture on the piano lid?)
I couldn’t wait to get back to a proper Home:
scuffed lino; smells of overcooking; walls
glossed grey or pink; doorstop butties; bells
that told you where to go; lazy teachers; dorm
of heavy breathers; lav ends; tin bowls; friend
whose insults like a casually flicked towel
at the privates proved less of a betrayal
than those who promised, briefly, to be kind.
Page(s) 13
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