A New Calendar
The Sunday papers and then
the packed lunch, the polished shoes
work hanging over everything, like a news
report naming a hundred and twenty different types
of tumour, tempered only by bright
intervals in the south and west.
Even your dreams, less the usual array
of dazzling blondes wandering through,
like lush metaphors for something else,
than an inexorable walk down by the hospital
past telephones ringing in empty houses.
And waking now
to an alarm angry as a black-backed jackal.
You there, with your grim cheese-slices,
your tar-like tea, not liking the look,
smell, texture or sound of anything; as outside
a new calendar's first Monday comes,
like a dentist's drill, screaming to a start.
the packed lunch, the polished shoes
work hanging over everything, like a news
report naming a hundred and twenty different types
of tumour, tempered only by bright
intervals in the south and west.
Even your dreams, less the usual array
of dazzling blondes wandering through,
like lush metaphors for something else,
than an inexorable walk down by the hospital
past telephones ringing in empty houses.
And waking now
to an alarm angry as a black-backed jackal.
You there, with your grim cheese-slices,
your tar-like tea, not liking the look,
smell, texture or sound of anything; as outside
a new calendar's first Monday comes,
like a dentist's drill, screaming to a start.
Kevin Higgins lives in Galway, Ireland. In 2003 he won the Poetry Grand Slam at the CĂșirt International Festival of Literature and went on to represent Ireland in the European Slam in Paris. His first collection, The Boy With No Face, will be published by Salmon.
Page(s) 68
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